CHAPTER V THE BREAKDOWN OF PARTY GOVERNMENT BUT while in the field of thought and political action the riddle of Colonial government was finding solution, a peaceful material revolution was supplying the means, without which the ideals of statesmen might have remained a counsel of perfection. Against the disintegrating forces of distance and Railway developisolation, science has supplied connecting-links which bridge ment. oceans and draw together continents. Steamboats, railways, and cheap postal and telegraph rates are in these latter days the most powerful missioners of union. It was in keeping with this truth that the first colonial statesman who took up the work of railway development was also the strongest in his utterances on behalf of imperial unity. In 1849 Joseph Howe took a leading part in the movement to build a railway from Halifax to the St. Lawrence, which had been proposed as early as 1845. A joint survey was made in 1847 by the governments of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and so powerful was Howe's enthusiasm that he succeeded in persuading Lord Grey, the strictest of laissez aller free traders, of the advantage of an imperial guarantee to a line of railway from Halifax to Quebec or Montreal through British territory. The undertaking, however, fell through because the imperial authorities objected to the proposed route, on the ground that it ran too near to the frontier of the United States. Meanwhile, in Canada, railway development was being seriously entered upon. Modest attempts at railways had been for some time begun, but it was not till 1851 that a measure was passed which provided for the building of a great trunk Grand line to connect Montreal with Toronto. Quebec and Montreal were already connected by rail, and it was intended that the new line should be a continuation of the military line proposed between Halifax and Quebec; by which means an intercolonial railroad-would connect the Atlantic seaboard and the great lakes. As an example of the revolution effected by railways we may note that it took John A. Macdonald's father three weeks to make the journey by boat from Montreal to Kingston. As we have seen, the combined scheme failed, because the imperial authorities, on military grounds, would only sanction a road which ran greatly to the north of the one chosen by the colonies; but Mr. Hincks was none the less determined to go on with the westward branch of the scheme. The Grand Trunk Railway finally surmounted all obstacles, Railway, though not without great expense to the Canadian exchequer and great loss to the British investor. By 1860 the railway was completed from Rivière-du-loup on the Lower St. Lawrence as far as Sarnia and Windsor on the western lakes. It has been calculated that from first to last the Grand Trunk Railway must have cost the Canadian exchequer over sixteen million dollars; but in the long run the province received value for its money. Liberal grants were also made to the Great Western Railway, which ran from the Niagara River to Hamilton, London, and Windsor, and to the Northern Railway which ran from Toronto due north. During the Hincks-Morin ministry the first step was taken to encourage intercourse with Europe by the offer of a considerable subsidy for the carriage of mails between Canada and Great Britain. Seamy side of political Life. Nova Scotia had here also taken the lead, as such subsidies were given there as early as 1840. The Allan Line, which has played so great a part in bridging the Atlantic, began its operations in 1852. The steamers taken off during the Crimean War have run fortnightly with the mail between England and Canada since 1856. There was, it is true, another side of the shield in this outgrowth of material development. It was inevitable that when business played so great a part in politics jobbing and the advancement of personal interests should take closer grip of political life. Moreover this evil was intensified by the jealousy which prevailed between Upper and Lower Canada. In a private letter written to John A. Macdonald by his colleague, Mr. John Ross, in September, 1855, we find him saying: 'There is nothing that will so surely break down the Union as the leeching process going on towards Upper Canada. If they will insist on throwing away, year by year, large sums of money which bring no return, and are productive of no good to the country, the Union cannot be preserved; and although W. Lyon Mackenzie has failed for the present, some younger and stronger man will arise and agitate with more success. The money we vote for education in Lower Canada produces no corresponding results, as the priests for the most part pocket the cash.' It was an admitted evil that if a sum was properly demanded for some legitimate local purpose in one section, an equivalent sum had to be provided for the other as an offset, thereby entailing prodigal expenditure and unnecessarily increasing the public debt'.1 This state of things gave continual occasion for friction and jealousy. General. Lord Elgin's successor was Sir Edmund Head, who arrived Head Governorat the end of 1854. He had examined Elgin for a Merton fellowship, and carried on his work as governor with success. Most fortunately he proved persona grata to John A. Macdonald, who, from his accession to power in 1854 till his death, was the dominating force in Canadian public life. Macdonald had been prejudiced against Lord Elgin on account of his action regarding the Rebellion Losses Bill; and the short period. during which he served under him as Minister did not avail to remove such prejudices. Mr. Morin retired in the beginning 1 Pope, op. cit. vol. i, p. 150. Remodelling of Ministry. Bad times. of 1855, and the French Canadian portion of the Ministry was reorganized under Dr. Taché; and in 1856 a ministerial crisis was threatened by the resignation of the Upper Canada Liberal Ministers, who resented the nominal leadership of Sir Allan McNab. The difficulty was for the time averted, but the Conservatives, no less than the Liberal members of the Government, were dissatisfied with their inefficient and gouty leader; and when a majority of the Upper Canadian representatives voted against the Ministry on the question of the site of the new capital, opportunity was taken of the defeat to force his resignation. The old Ministry, minus Sir Allan, returned to office; Macdonald, along with Taché, being now the nominal, as well as real, head. In 1856 the Legislative Council was made elective in the case of future members; the term of office being fixed at eight years. Each section of the province received twenty-four members, and elections were to be held every two years, twelve members being returned at a time. In the next year Taché retired from public life, and his place as French leader was taken by Mr. George Etienne Cartier, with whom Macdonald was on terms of cordial intimacy. Cartier ranks with Macdonald amongst the makers of Canada. In early life a follower of Papineau, he had fought in the abortive rebellion of 1837. Elected to Parliament in 1848, he followed Mr. Morin in his alliance with the Conservatives, and from 1855 till his death in 1873 occupied the same position among the French Canadian LiberalConservatives as was occupied by Macdonald among the English. The time was one of stress and difficulty, as Canada, after a bad harvest, was passing through a period of severe depression. The great sums expended from 1854 to 1857 on railways, and the artificial prosperity thereby brought about, led to inevitable reaction. The general election which took place in the winter of 1857 did not serve to clear the political atmosphere. In Upper Canada the opposition went to the polls with the cry of representation by population and the abolition of 'separate' or denominational schools, and they secured a majority in that section of the province. The French Canadians, however, regarded this programme with horror, and in the result Mr. Cartier returned to Parliament with almost the entire representation of Lower Canada pledged to support him. 6 No subject indeed presented greater difficulty to govern- Education. ments dependent upon majorities, approaching public questions from a widely different standpoint, than that of Education. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada were necessarily pledged to support denominational schools, whereas the Liberals, and not a few of the Conservatives, of Upper Canada, in their dislike of Roman Catholicism, were moving in the direction of secular education. Separate' schools, i. e. schools in a similar position to the non-provided English. schools of to-day, were recognized in 1841, when the first attempt was made at a general system of public schools. The 'separate' schools were almost entirely Roman Catholic, and even many Catholics were content with the religious teaching given in the public schools; but an unsuccessful measure, introduced in 1849, which threatened to abolish 'separate' schools and make a secular system universal, alarmed the friends of denominational education and caused them to assume a more militant attitude. In Upper Canada the separate schools received their share of the public grant and of the county school rate, but the municipal school rate was devoted wholly to the common schools. By an Act, however, of 1855 all who contributed to the support of separate schools were exempt from the payment of this municipal rate. The attempt to abolish separate schools by Parliament merely served as a spur to their establishment, and in 1863 the dispute was terminated by the final victory of the Roman Catholic Church. Moreover, had not there been separate schools for Protestants |