Evolution of the dominion of Canada; its government and its politics

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Preface

MORE than once I have been asked why I, an Englishman, long resident in the state of Connecticut, take so much pleasure in writing on Canada. The answer to this question is easy to make. From 1896 to 1914, my work, as a special correspondent of London, Leeds, and Glasgow newspapers, took me as much afield in the Dominion of Canada as in the United States, as frequently to Ottawa as to Washington. Canada has also a peculiar interest for me arising out of long devotion to a particular line of study. From days of boyhood, when I was serving my apprenticeship to newspaper work in England, the study of the history and working of British political institutions, local, central, and imperial, has been one of the joys of my life.

In Canada, British political institutions have been in working since 1758 — working under New World conditions. As transplanted in the eighteenth century they were as nearly as possible replicas of English political institutions — as much so as the institutions, parliamentary, administrative, and judicial, that were established by England in Ireland at the end of the fifteenth century.

In the first half of the nineteenth century there were far-reaching reforms in Great Britain. The system of parliamentary representation was

[ xiii ]

PREFACE

modernized and made much more democratic than it had been for three centuries before 1832; and within the decade in which this long overdue reform was effected, the attitude of Great Britain towards her oversea possessions also underwent a great and beneficent change.

Responsible government was conceded to the colonies in which representative government had already been established; and with the concession of responsible government the political institutions of Canada went through much the same process as the political institutions of the United Kingdom, local and central, had done in the eighty-two years from 1832 to the beginning of the war.

In no province in Canada is the political civilization much more than a century and a half old. But I have found the study of it as fascinating as that of the much older political civilizations of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It has presented much the same four aspects: (i) how the older political institutions came to be; (2) how they worked; (3) the forces that impelled their reform and liberalization; (4) how the newer and more democratic political institutions have worked.

More ground has been covered in the following pages than is usual in books concerned with " government and politics. More ground had to be covered if the government and contemporary politics of the Dominion of Canada were to be visualized and comprehended. For conditions

[xiv]

PREFACE

in Canada are peculiar, and peculiar in at least four respects.

These are (i) the conditions under which the political development of Canada has proceeded since 1763; (2) the relations of Canada with Great Britain and the empire; (3) the enormous influence which Canada, and in particular the united provinces of Upper and Lower Canada — 1840-1867 — have had on the colonial policy of Great Britain since 1840; and (4) the position of Canada arising from the former political connection of three of the old British North American provinces with the thirteen colonies that broke away in 1 776-1 783 from Great Britain and established themselves as the United States; the proximity of Canada to the United States; and the influence that the United States has had on the political and economic development of Canada, and on its relations, political and economic, with Great Britain and the vast empire of which Great Britain is the center.

It is to make Canada understandable, and also to make clear its relations with Great Britain, and also the potency of American influence upon it, that so much attention has been devoted in these pages to the evolution of the Dominion, and to the National Policy, which, largely owing to American example and influence, had its origin as far back as 1858.

Dominion politics from 1867 to the war cannot be understood without an adequate comprehen-

[xv]

PREFACE

sion of the conditions, political, racial, religious, economic, and social, within Canada, and also of some important conditions of external origin that brought about Confederation, and the gradual development of the Dominion to its present-day status of nation. There is also needed some comprehension of the history of the National Policy, and its various developments, and its influence on Canadian politics and on the day-by-day life of the people of the Dominion, as well as on the relations of the Dominion with Great Britain and the other dominions, and with the United States.

To some degree this preface is characterized by a personal note. I will end it in the same key by adding that my interest 'in the history and working of British political institutions has been stimulated by the privileges I have enjoyed since 1894 at the Connecticut State Library, where the collection of material for the study of Canadian history and politics is remarkably large and complete. In this respect the State Library here is excelled, so far as I can recall, by only three libraries in England, and all these three libraries are in London.

Edward Porritt

Hartford, Connecticut, U. S. A.

May 24, 1918.

[xvi]

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The British Oversea Dominions i

II. The Dominion of Canada — Area, Physical

Chapter I The British Oversea Dominions

T

HE oversea possessions of Great Britain, Extent of ' other than the Indian Empire — pos- *^®

1 • 1 • 1 I c 1 British

sessions which in the year before the Empire great war of 1914-1918 were of the aggregate area of nearly nine and a half million square miles — have been grouped at the colonial ofl&ce in London, since 1907, in two divisions. The grouping is by political status. It is determined by the relations of parliament at Westminster and the colonial ofl&ce to each of the forty-eight oversea possessions.

In one group are the dominions, which call for pouticai little or no attention from parliament, and, as ^°"p^« regards their internal concerns, throw no burdens oversea on the colonial ofl&ce. In the other group are p°^^®^- the crown colonies and protectorates. These receive some attention from parliament, in particular when the annual vote for the colonial ofl&ce is before the house of commons and the house of lords, — a vote on which any aspect of

Area and population of crown colonies

Dominions

Responsible government crown colony government can be discussed, — and the internal and external concerns of these colonies are constantly under the supervision of the colonial office.

The dependencies under the supervision of the colonial office cover on the roughest of estimates an area of two million square miles. They have a population of over forty millions, among whom — including immigrants as well as children of the soil — are to be found, in the words of the Book of Daniel, "all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth." ^

The dominions are (i) the Dominion of Canada; (2) the Commonwealth of Australia; (3) the Dominion of New Zealand; (4) the Union of South Africa; and (5) the Dominion of Newfoundland. In all these British oversea possessions there are parliaments or legislatures elected on democratic franchises, and responsible governments.

The term "responsible government" is a comparatively new one in British colonial history. It was not of British political terminology — certainly not accepted in England as applicable to colonial governments — until Great Britain in the period between 1837 and 1850 at last began to learn the lesson of the American revolution, and to concede large powers of self-government to the British North American provinces; next

^ Cf. C. P. Lucas, "The Crown Colonies and Protectorates," Manchester Guardian, March 20, 1917.

to Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony; and finally in 1893 to Natal,

The term "responsible government," as now used in British political science, means that in each dominion there is a parliament and an executive, called the ministry, which, like the ministry in Downing Street for the last two centuries, is dependent for its tenure on the continuous support of a majority in the house of commons. In the oversea dominions, as in the United Kingdom, the executive is often described as the cabinet. The correct term is the ministry; for it frequently happens, especially at Westminster, that there are men in the ministry who are not of the inner committee of the privy council which is termed the cabinet.

The aggregate area of the five dominions in 1914 was in round figures seven and a half million square miles. The aggregate white population was nearly fifteen millions, as compared with forty-six millions in the United Kingdom. Western AustraUa, a state in the Commonwealth of AustraUa, and Natal, a province in the Union of South Africa, were the last colonies, now of the dominions, to receive responsible government.

Western Australia was a crown colony until 1890. Natal was in the same class until 1893. With these exceptions, electors in all the dominions, for at least half a century before the world upheaval of 1914, had been as free to govern themselves in all internal or domestic concerns,

Meaning of

responsible government

Area and population of the dominions

Political freedom in the dominions

Protective tariffs

Protection against imports from the United Kingdom

Dominions and imperial ezpenditores and in more recent years also in regard to some external matters, such as tariff preferences and trade conventions, as the parliamentary electors of the United Kingdom.

There were no preferences for the oversea dominions in the tariffs of the United Kingdom after 1846. From 1859, when the united provinces of Quebec and Ontario established a protective tariff, each colony or province that is now of the dominions was free to frame its own tariff without regard to the industrial or commercial interests of the United Kingdom.

With the exception of Newfoundland, all the dominions in the period between 1859 ^^'^ 19^4 had availed themselves of this liberty to impose protective duties on imports from the United Kingdom and from other parts of the British Empire. It was not until 1897, when the Dominion of Canada made the innovation, that there were any preferences in the tariffs of the dominions for imports from England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Except for contributions towards the British navy from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Newfoundland, none of which was made earlier than 1887, and some contribution for several years from the Union of South Africa towards the expense of maintaining British troops in that dominion, no dominion makes, or ever has made, any contribution to the imperial exchequer.

In the year before the war, the British national debt was seven hundred and sixteen milHons sterHng. A very large part of the national debt that accumulated in the eighteenth century was incurred in defending and extending British colonial possessions in North America. Some of the debt of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was also incurred in wars which arose directly out of Great Britain's oversea possessions. But no dominion has ever paid a contribution to the interest or sinking fund of the national debt. These have always been a charge on the taxpayers of the United Kingdom; and the maintenance of the crown, of the colonial office and its staff, and of the foreign office and the diplomatic and consular services, have also been charges to which no contributions have ever been made by the dominions.

Parliament at Westminster never interferes in the domestic concerns of the dominions except at the instance of a dominion parliament, when, for example, an amendment to the constitution of a dominion is desired. The imperial parliament has far less to do with the internal concerns of the dominions — with those of Canada, for instance — than congress at Washington has to do with the internal concerns of the several states.

The presence of the governor-general at Ottawa, and the lieutenant-governors at the provincial capitals — Charlottetown, Fredericton, Halifax, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton,

No contributions to the British national debt

No interference from parliament at Westminster

Governor-general and Victoria — all representatives of the king, are about the only manifestations in Canada of the close connection between the Dominion and Great Britain.

The governor-general is sent out from London. His salary and establishment charges are paid by the Dominion. Lieutenant-governors are appointed at Ottawa. But while the governor-general is appointed by the king, on the recommendation of the British cabinet, always with the approval of the executive of the Dominion, no other civil servants are appointed by the British government; and there is no interference from the colonial office with the internal affairs of any of the dominions.

Crown colonies stand in quite another relation to parliament and the colonial office. Many of them have elected, or partly elected and partly nominated, legislatures, with fiscal and police powers and comprehensive law-making powers. They have not responsible government as it exists in the dominions. Their executives cannot be dislodged by an adverse vote in the legislature.

At the colonial office crown colonies are constitutionally grouped into five classes: (i) Colonies possessing an elected house of assembly and a nominated council, e.g. the Bahamas, the Barbados, and Bermuda; (2) colonies possessing a partly elected legislative council, the constitution of which, as in British Guiana and the island of Cyprus, does not provide for an official majority; (3) colonies possessing a partly elected legislative council, the constitution of which provides for an official majority, e.g. Fiji, Leeward Islands, Jamaica, and Malta; (4) colonies and protectorates in which there are legislative councils appointed by the crown, e.g. British Honduras, Ceylon, East Africa Protectorate, Falkland Islands, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Southern Nigeria, Straits Settlement, and Trinidad; and (5) colonies and protectorates in which there are no legislative councils or representative institutions, e.g. Ashanti, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Northern Nigeria, the northern territories of the Gold Coast, St. Helena, Uganda, Weihaiwei, and the islands under the protectorate of the Western Pacific High Commission.

Great Britain, at an early stage in the new Attitude colonial era — the era that may be dated from °^ ^""^^^

J • 1 1 111 Britain

1840 — determmed that the development of towards these crown colonies, most of them tropical *^°^™

, . , , colonies

possessions in which there can never be a preponderant white population, was a necessity to the British Empire. It was then realized that such a development could come only through a partnership between the white and the colored races.

Different methods have been adopted in working towards the development of these colonies.^

^ "Beyond anything, such success as has attended our people in dealing with colored races has been the result of practical good sense, which has not attempted to drill alien

These methods represent a variety of means to a single end. They represent stages of constitutional and social development adapted to differing stages of civilization. The general policy is to adapt to every administrative unit of the empire the principles that have long been applied in working out the political, social, and economic welfare of the British nation, and to establish in each of the crown colonies the order, stability, freedom, and justice that are characteristics of British political civilization.^

Grants in aid are sometimes made to crown colonies by the British parliament. Higher civil office with servants, as well as governors, are sent out from London; and the supervision by the colonial

peoples on one uniform pattern or to stamp out diversity, but. has utilized the men and the things native to the soil and familiar to the peoples — the sultan, the headman, the village community; respecting customs and creeds, letting the peoples live their own lives in their own way, provided that they abide by the general rules which distinguish humanity from barbarism; gradually leavening them with the British spirit of freedom rather than inculcating a sense of British domination. By eschewing uniformity, by adapting methods to diverse peoples of diverse lands in preference to recasting the peoples in a strange mold, by ensuring life and property and evenhanded justice, by letting conditions grow instead of forcing them, the English control many millions in smgular contentment and goodwill." — C. P. Lucas, "The Crown Colonies and Protectorates," Manchester Guardian, March 30, 1917. Cf. Josiah Royce, "Race Questions, Provincialism, -and other American Problems," 22-25.

^ Cf. Sir Charles Bruce, "The Broad Stone of Empire: Problems of Crown Colony Administration," I, 34-35.

office of these oversea possessions — most of them colonies in which the white population is largely outnumbered by natives — is usually close and continuous.

The establishment of representative and responsible government in the dominions — the creation of these autonomous states of the British Empire — was a gradual process. It went on most quickly and most obviously from 1840, when the provinces of Quebec and Ontario were united, until 1893. It did not stop in 1.893 when responsible government was granted to Natal. Other concessions, all tending to autonomy and sovereignty, were made after the last of the dominions became self-governing.

The process, going on almost continuously since 1840, has been one in which the United States, quite unconsciously to most Americans, has had a large and easily traceable influence. This influence has been due to the political development of the United States since 1783, and also to the fact that the old British North American provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, in their formative period, were neighbors of the United States, which greatly influenced their social, political, and economic life, as since 1867 the United States has influenced the life of the Dominion of Canada.

There have been four eras in British colonial policy and history since 1776-1783. The first

Development of responsible government

Lifiuenca of United States on Britlsli colonial policy

E\"OLLTION OF THE DOMINION OF C\NADA

extended from 17S3 to the Papineau and Mackenzie rebellions in Lower and Upper Canada in 1837. The second lasted from 1837 to the confederation of the British North American provinces, which was accomplished between 1S65 and 1873; and the third was from 1873 to the great war. from which began a fourth era in the colonial history of the British Empire.

The process of estabhshing representative and responsible government in the dominions — so far at anj' rate as it depended on parliament at Westminster and the colonial ofl&ce — did not begin until the union of the p^o^"inces of Quebec and Ontario, an experiment which was a direct result of the Papineau and ^lackenzie rebeUions. It was only as recently as 1907 that Great Britain, in continuation of the process, finally and fully conceded to the dominions the much valued right to appoint their own plenipotentiaries to make their commercial treaties with foreign powers.

In this gradual development of self-government, statesmen of what are now the dominions had the largest part. With them, and in particular with the statesmen of British North America, originated the successive demands between 1820 and 1907 for more autonomy and for less control by parUament at Westminster and by the colonial office,

Papineau and Mackenzie, in the years from 1820 to the union of the provinces, risked their

[lo]

lives in pressing on the British government the first of these demands. Gait, the most famous Men who of the ministers of finance of the United Provinces, '^^^ pressed to success in 1859 the demand for the de^r^ds right of the provinces to make their own tariffs without regard to the industrial interests of Great Britain.

John A. Macdonald, Alexander Gait, Charles Tupper, George Brown, George Etienne Carrier, Edward Blake, Wilfrid Laurier, Richard Cartwright, and William S. Fielding pressed other demands from the negotiations which preceded confederation in 1867 until the right of the dominions to make their own immigration laws and their own commercial treaties was conceded in 1904 and 1907.

Quite sixty years had elapsed, and there had British been the rebellions in Canada, before statesmen ^^*^^" at Westminster really began to learn the lesson UsMeam of the American revolution. Then they gradually ^^ '^^' conceded the demands that were made from the i776-i783 colonies that are now of the dominions. They themselves suggested little. They originated few of the developments that have contributed to the autonomy of the dominions. But after 1837 they became more receptive to demands from colonial statesmen; and except for Gait's demand of 1859, for the right of the provinces to make their own tariffs, and some delay in fully conceding the demand of the dominions to make their own commercial treaties, there was no

[II]

New policy strengthens

the links of empire grudging in conceding these demands after the lesson of the American revolution had once been learned.

After it was realized that as concessions towards autonomy were granted the links binding the dominions to Great Britain became stronger instead of weaker, there were no compromises with the demands. As the result of the colonial statesmanship that pressed these demands, and the statesmanship at Westminster that conceded them, responsible government for all the colonies that are now of the dominions had been established for at least two decades before 1914; and its establishment, and the success which has attended it in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Newfoundland, is the greatest political achievement of people under British rule in the 140 years between the American revolution ■ and the war between Great Britain and her allies and the Teutonic powers.

Chapter II

THE DOMINION OF CANADA — AREA, PHYSICAL FEATURES, AND DIS- TRIBUTION OF POPULATION

I

N area and population Canada is the largest Areaof of the dominions. Politically and economi- i^® cally it is, with the possible exception of India, of Canada the most interesting of the British oversea possessions. It embraces the northern half of the North American continent, with its adjacent islands in the Arctic Ocean, but exclusive of ■ Alaska in the extreme northwest, the island of Newfoundland, and the small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are colonies of the French republic. The total area of the Dominion is 3,729,665 square miles. Of this, 309,000 square miles are comprised in the arctic islands.

Newfoundland, the oldest of the British oversea Canada possessions in the New World, has an area of ^^ _ 42,000 square miles; and the aggregate area of foundiand these two'^ dominions — Canada and Newfoundland — is 3,771,665 square miles. This is a little ' more than the area of the United States; larger by 640,333 square miles than the combined area of the commonwealth of Australia and the dominion of New Zealand, and not much smaller than the aggregate area of all the countries of Europe.

Coastlines of the Dominion

Hudson Bay

The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States are much straighter than those of the Dominion. The Canadian coastline on both oceans is much indented with gulfs and bays — particularly the Atlantic coast. These gulfs and bays are good feeding and breeding grounds for fish. They also aflFord many harbors and havens for fishermen, thus giving Canada the most extensive sea-fisheries in the world.

Hudson Bay — a sea 800 miles from north to south, and 600 miles in width — is wholly within the Dominion. For two centuries Hudson Bay had great influence on exploration and trade in Canada. With the enormous development of grain growing in what are now the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, between 1898 and 1916, and with the construction *by the Dominion government in the years from 1910 to 1 91 6 of a harbor, with wharfs and elevators for the grain trade, at Port Nelson, and a railway 410 miles long from Le Pas, Manitoba, to this new port, Hudson Bay is again of importance in the trade and transport economy of the large area of Canada that lies between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains.

Canada has a common use with the United States of all the Great Lakes — Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior; and also a common use of the St. Lawrence from its source in Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. Since 1854, when by treaty the United States conceded rence River

AREA, PHYSICAL FEATURES, POPULATION

the privilege of free navigation of Lake Michigan to Canada, and Great Britain conceded to the United States the navigation of the St. Lawrence, both countries have had joint use of the series of magnificent canals — Canadian and American — that make navigation possible from Lake Superior to tidewater below Montreal.

The St. Lawrence occupies an even larger st. Lawplace than Hudson Bay in the history of Canada, particularly as regards exploration and trade, and incidentally as regards diplomatic relations with the United States. In the sixteenth century it opened a route for exploration, colonization, and trade. It led Cartier, the explorer, in 1535 to the sites now occupied by the cities of Quebec and Montreal.

In the eighteenth century, after the creation its inof the province of Ontario by the Quebec act of ^"^^^^ 1 79 1, and in the nineteenth century, it was the deveiop- St. Lawrence, with its importance in inland q^^°* navigation, that brought into existence the Ontario cities of Prescott, Kingston, Hamilton, and Toronto; and with the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Montreal to Vancouver, in 1886, there came into existence, as the most western cities on the lakes and St. Lawrence route. Port Arthur and Fort William, also in Ontario, the largest grain ports in the British Empire.

It is within the power of the Dominion parliament to organize territories into provinces. Three

Creation of new provinces

PoUttcal divisions of the Dominion

Yukon Territory

Order In which provinces entered Confederation provinces have been so created since Confederation. They were carved out of the vast territorylying between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains, over which the Hudson Bay Company ruled from the reign of Charles II until 1869, when its rights were acquired by purchase by the Dominion government. Manitoba was created a province in 1870, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905.

Since 1905 the Dominion has been politically divided into nine provinces and two territories. The territories are Yukon and the northwest territories. Yukon is bounded on the west by Alaska, on the south by British Columbia, on the north by the Arctic Ocean, and on the east by the northwest territories, which extend to the western shore of Hudson Bay. Both territories lie north of the sixtieth parallel — the northern boundary of all provinces west of Ontario. There were in 1916 fewer than 30,000 people in these territories.

Only in the Yukon is there any industry — that of gold mining, of which Dawson, the political capital, is the center. The Yukon is the only territory that elects a representative to the house of commons at Ottawa.

The provinces in the order in which they came into Confederation are: Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, 1867; Manitoba, 1870; British Columbia, 1871; Prince Edward Island, 1873; and Saskatchewan and Alberta,

AREA, PHYSICAL FEATURES, POPULATION

1905. Quebec is the capital of the old French province; Toronto of Ontario; Halifax of Nova Scotia; Fredericton of New Brunswick; Winnipeg of Manitoba; Victoria, on Vancouver Island, of British Columbia Charlottetown of Prince Edward Island; Regina of Saskatchewan; and Edmonton of Alberta.

These are the political divisions which are under provincial or territorial government for domestic concerns; each, with the exception of the northwest territories, with its quota of senators and commoners in the Dominion parliament — a quota that as regards the house of commons is determined by act of parliament after each decennial census.

The area of each of the nine provinces and of the Yukon and northwest territories, the population of each at the census of 191 1, and the number of senators and members of the house of commons allotted to each province and to the Yukon by the redistribution act of the Dominion parliament of 1914 and as regards the senate by the amendment to the British North America act of 191 5 ^ are stated in the accompanying table.^

As the Dominion embraces almost half the North American continent, it has a diversified climate. On the Pacific coast, with the ocean on one side and lofty mountain ranges on the other, the climate is moist and temperate. East of the

^ British Statutes 5 and 6, George V, c. 45. ^ Canada Year Book, 1914, 41, 43.

Representation in

parliament at Ottawa

Population and representation

Climate

of beyond

the Great

Lakes

Province

Area sq. m.

Population, 1911

Representation Sen. H.C.

705.834

407,262

21,418

27,985

251,832

2,003,232

2,523,274

492,338

351,889

455.614 392,480

93,728

492,432

374,663

8,512

18,481

24 24 10 10

6 6

4 6 6

Nova Scotia

New Brunswick

Manitoba

II 16 12

British Columbia

Prince Edward Island .

Saskatchewan

Alberta

Yukon Territory

Northwest Territories .

I

Totals

3,729,665

7,206,643

Climate

from

Lakes to

Atlantic

Ocean

Spring

and

summer

In the

maritime

Rocky Mountains, on the high level plateaus of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the northwest territories, the climate is characterized by extremes of temperature, but is bright, dry, bracing, and healthy.

East of Manitoba the extremes of heat and cold are modified by the Great Lakes. In the valleys of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence a cold but bright and exhilarating winter is followed by a long and warm summer. The Maritime Provinces, lying between the same parallels of latitude as France, and with shores washed by the Atlantic, are equally favored in climate.

The opening of spring in the Maritime Provinces is usually a little later than in Ontario or in the prairie provinces, and a little earlier than in the lower St. Lawrence valley. On the other hand summer lingers longer, especially in the Annapolis valley. Summer in the Maritime Provinces is not as a rule quite so warm as in