be felt, as in the grants to the Maynooth College and some other questions. It would be the same way with the people of Lower Canada, and a more deplorable state of things would be the inevitable result. The majority would be forced by the minority to do things they would not, under the circumstances, think of doing. This is a state so undesirable that, although I am strongly opposed to the proposed Federal union, I am still more strongly opposed to a legislative union. Those who desire a legislative union may see from this what discordant elements they would have to deal with in undertaking the task, and what misery they would bring upon the country by such a step. I know there is an apprehension among the British population in Lower Canada that, with even the small power that the Local Government will possess, their rights will not be respected. How, then, can it be expected that the French population can anticipate any more favorable result from the General Government, when it is to possess such enormous powers over the destinies of their section of the country? Experience shows that majorities are always aggressive, and it cannot well be otherwise in this instance. It therefore need not be wondered at that the people of Lower Canada, of British origin, are ready to make use of every means to prevent their being placed at the mercy of a preponderating population of a different origin. I agree with them in thinking that they ought to take nothing on trust in this matter of entering upon a new state of political existence, and neither ought we of French origin to do so, in relation to the General Government, however happy our relations to each other may be at present.

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Tuesday, February 21, 1865.

Hon. Solicitor General Langevin'. . . . The honorable member for Hochelaga told us the other day that the plan of a Confederation was adopted and moved by the present Administration for the mere purpose of stifling the cry of representation by population. Well, and if it really were so, where does the honorable member find the harm in it? Is it not most important that we should stop that cry for representation based on population, in our present condition? Representation by population would have left us Lower Canadians in an inferior position relatively to that of Upper Canada-would have conferred on the latter the privilege of legislating for us, not only in general, but in local matters. The honorable member for Hochelaga ought to have been the last to reproach the present Government with having, by this measure of Confederation, stopped the cry for representation based on population. In 1854, the honorable member admitted, as he himself acknowledges, that representation based on population was just in principle, and the consequence of that admission was fatal. The consequence was that the honarable member was compelled to keep in the same track until the formation of the Brown-Dorion administration in 1858-an Administration which had no very long existence.

The question of representation based on population must be met; that question must be settled. To say that we will grant it is to wish to place us in a position of inferiority, and I, for my part, will never consent to place my section of the province in that position. Then there is another alternative that is proposed-annexation to the United States. I do not believe there is a single member in the House or out of the House who would consent to the annexation of Canada to the United States. But it is a question which must be examined when discussing that of Confederation, because it is one of the alternatives offered to us, and out of which we have to make a selection.

What would be the fate of the French-Canadians in the case of annexation to the United States? Let us profit by the example of the French race in the United States, and enquire what has been the fate of the French in Louisiana? What has become of them? What has become of their 1 Hon. H. L. Langevin, Member for Dorchester.

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language, their customs, their manners and their institutions? After the war, hardly a trace will remain to show that the French race has passed that way. So far as religion is concerned, we might not find ourselves so badly off; but we live in peace at the present day and are perfectly comfortable; Catholics and Protestants have the same rights and religious liberty, and they live as peacefully together as if there was but one religion in the land...

Monday, February 27, 1865.

Mr. Dunkin― . . . . I am bound to repeat at the outset, that no one can do justice to a question like this, and start with the idea of at all ignoring details. Here is a measure proposed for our acceptance, embodied in seventy-two resolutions, and which resolutions affirm a great many more than seventy-two propositions, connected with almost every principle known to have reference to the theory and practice of popular government. I say it is a scheme which is as complex and as vast as one can well imagine, and declamation about first principles can be of no real use in its discussioncan avail only to mislead in reference to it. We have to deal with no mere abstract question of a nationality, or of union or disunion, or of a Federal as opposed to a Legislative union. It is idle to talk vaguely about the maintenance of British connection, or to go into magnificent speculations about the probable results of independence, or blindly to urge this scheme as a sure preventative of annexation to the United States. These cheap and easy generalities are thoroughly unreliable. The only question is, how is this plan, in its entirety, going to work? And this question is one which is not easy to answer; it is one requiring much patience, and a close examination of details. It is the question which, if the House will lend me its attention, I will endeavor to discuss to the extent of my ability. I may further take leave to say at starting, that I do not approach this question from any new point of view whatever. Always I have been, and now I am, a unionist in the strictest and largest sense of the term. I desire to perpetuate the union between Upper and Lower Canada. I desire to see developed, the largest union that can possibly be developed (I care not by what name you call it) between all the colonies, provinces, and dependencies of the British Crown. I desire to maintain that intimate union which ought to subsist, but which unfortunately does not subsist as it ought, between the Imperial Government and all those dependencies. I am a unionist, who especially does not desire to see the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada disunited. To my mind, this scheme does not at all present itself as one of union; and if honorable gentlemen opposite will admit the truth, they will acknowledge that, practically, it amounts to a disunion between Upper and Lower Canada. I confess that I am irreconcilably opposed to that portion of the scheme. I repeat I do not care to see Upper and Lower Canada more dissevered than they are; on the contrary, I wish to see them brought into closer union; and far from regarding this scheme as cementing more closely the connection of these provinces with the British Empire, I look upon it as tending rather towards a not distant disunion of these provinces from the British Empire.

If I could be astonished at anything in politics, Mr. Speaker, I should be astonished at the attempt which has been made by some honorable gentlemen on the Treasury benches to represent the state of the public feeling on this subject as not having that mere sudden, sensational, unreliable character which I have ascribed to it. Long forgotten expressions of individual opinion; clauses said to have formed part of bills not to be found, and not known to have been even drawn; motions threatened but never made, the small party fencings of past times, from before the days of the Canada Trade Act downwards, have been pressed into service to meet the exigencies of a hard case. Well, I shall not follow out that line of argument; it is not worth while. We all know that, from the time of the union of Canada. at all events until very lately indeed, nothing like serious discus

sion of the propriety or impropriety of a Federal union, or of any union at all, of the aggregate of these British American Provinces, has ever so little occupied the public mind.

It can hardly be denied, Mr. Speaker, that there is a good deal of practical objection to the plan of shifting representation districts, which is what this system adopts, and what the system of the United States adopted. Every ten years the representation from each province in the House of Commons is to be changed or readjusted by a rule which, for all practical purposes, is essentially the same as that of the United States. Of course we have not the little addition of the allowance for the three-fifths of the slave population which they have; but decennially we are to take the population of the several provinces, and by a rule in all essentials common to the two systems, we are to declare how many representation districts are to be allowed to each province. Now, the result of that system must be that we can have no lasting constituencies for the future House of Commons. These representation districts cannot be kept to correspond with our municipal, business or registration districts, or with our districts for representation in our provincial legislatures. We are to have a set of special, shifting districts for the mere purpose of electing our Federal House of Commons. I must say that this principle is not, from a British point of view, a sound one. What we ought to do is, to try to establish in this country of ours a set of representation districts as permanent and as closely coinciding with our territorial divisions existing for other purposes, as circumstances will allow us to have them; sub-dividing or otherwise altering them, or erecting new ones, only as occasion may be found to require.

Hon. Atty. Gen. Cartier-We will do that for the local parliaments. Mr. Dunkin-Perhaps so, and perhaps not. That distinction, however, is just what I complain of We are to change our districts for purposes of representation in the local parliaments, if we like, but not unless we like. These subdivisions of our provinces may thus, in the main, be permanent. But for representation in the Federal Parliament we are, at each of these decennial periods, to have a general readjustment of the whole country, so as to divide each province anew into its due number of aliquot parts. This is an innovation on our usages, greatly for the worse. It goes to destroy that character of reality, convenience and stability which-if our system, as a whole, is to have such character-had need be maintained to the utmost extent practicable, in respect of our constituencies and of our minor territorial delimitations generally. This changing every ten years brings together electors who have not been in the habit of acting with each other. In England they do nothing of this sort; they do not change their limits lightly. The several bodies of men who send representatives to the Imperial House of Commons have the habit of so coming together, as bodies not likely to be broken up. We ought to keep this as an element of our Constitution, but it is carefully eliminated from it.

For all legislative purposes, we must look to have all our territorial divisions open to frequent, one might say perpetual, reconstruction; and this subject perpetually to the disturbing influences of the party warfare of the hour. The exigencies of that warfare, we may be sure, will tell; and whatever the party in the ascendent, whether in the country at large or locally, will find means in this part of our machinery for advancing its ends means not quite of the sort to commend themselves to one's approval.

In the United States, as is admitted, the Senate does a certain part of what we undertake here to do by means of a Cabinet. The Federal check so exercised by the Senate renders unnecessary, for any Federal purposes, the existence of a Cabinet. Indeed they do not want a Cabinet for any purpose at all. It is not of their system. But here, with our chief magistrate not elected, we must have one. And yet, how are we to make it work

engrafted on a system which, in its essentials, is after all more American than British? This is what I have now come to. I have to ask honorable gentlemen opposite how they are going to organize their Cabinet, for these provinces, according to this so-called Federal scheme? I think I may defy them to show that the Cabinet can be formed on any other principle than that of a representation of the several provinces in that Cabinet. It is admitted that the provinces are not really represented to any Federal intent in the Legislative Council. The Cabinet here must discharge all that kind of function, which in the United States is performed, in the Federal sense, by the Senate. And precisely as in the United States, wherever a Federal check is needed, the Senate has to do Federal duty as an integral part of the Executive Government. So here, when that check cannot be so got, we must seek such substitute for it as we may, in a Federal composition of the Executive Council; that is to say, by making it distinctly representative of the provinces. Well, I must say that this sort of thing is utterly variant from, and inconsistent with British practice and British principle; with the constitutional system which makes the whole Cabinet responsible for every act of government. The British Cabinet is no Cabinet of sections but a unit.

But now, if this Executive Council is to have in it, as I am sure it must have, in order to work at all, a representation of the different provinces, all or nearly all of them, let us look for a moment at what will have to be its number. There are two ways of calculating this-two sets of data on which to go. Either we must go upon what I may call the wants of the component parts, or we may start from the wants of the country as a whole. Suppose, then, we start from the wants of the different provinces. I take it that no section of the Confederation can well have less than one representative in the Cabinet. Prince Edward Island will want one; Newfoundland, one. A difficulty presents itself with regard to Lower Canada. On just the same principle upon which Lower Canada wants, for Federal ends, to have a proper representation in the Executive Council, on that same principle the minority populations in Lower Canada will each want, and reasonably want, the same thing. We have three populations in Lower Canada-the French-Canadians, the Irish Catholics, and the British Protestants. In other words there are the Catholics and the non-Catholics, and the English-speaking and the non-English-speaking, and these two cross-lines of division cut our people into the three divisions I have just indicated. Well, if in a government of this Federal kind the different populations of Lower Canada are to feel that justice is done them, none of them are to be there ignored. The consequences of ignoring them might not be very comfortable. Heretofore, according to general usage, the normal amount of representation for Lower Canada in the Executive Council has been six seats out of twelve. Of those, four may be said legitimately to belong to the French-Canadians, one to the Irish Catholics, and one to the British Protestant class. Every one is satisfied that that is about the fairest thing that can be done. There have been times when these proportions have varied. There have been exceptional times when the British Protestant population has had to put up with a SolicitorGeneral out of the Cabinet, and has done so with no very loud complaint. There has never been a time, I think, when there was not an Irish Catholic in the Cabinet. There have been times when the number of FrenchCanadians has been less than four, and there was then much complaint. Six members-four, one and one-are just about what you must give to please each section of Lower Canada. Well, sir, if there are to be six for Lower Canada, there must be six or seven for Upper Canada, and you cannot very well leave less than three each for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and, as I have said, one each for Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island; and thus you have an Executive Council of twenty or twenty-one members, besides all we might have to add for other provinces; and this, I rather think, is a little too many. The thing could not be done; for so large a Cabinet could never work. Suppose then, on the other hand, that we start with the idea of limiting the number of our Executive Council

to meet what I may call the exigencies of the country as a whole. Eleven, twelve or thirteen-the latter, as an honourable member observes, is an unlucky number-will be as many as we can possibly allow. Of this number one, as before, will be wanted for Newfoundland and one for Prince Edward Island. If one is wanted for each of the little provinces, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia will be sorely discontented unless they get, at least, two apiece; and neither Lower Canada nor Upper Canada will be contented with the three left for each of them. And for Lower Canada, in particular, how will anyone divide this intractable figure between her French, Irish and British? Shall we give them one apiece, and ask the French-Canadian element to be content with one voice in a cabinet of a dozen?-or, give that element two, without satisfying it-so leaving out either the Irish or the British, to its intense disgust? or give the preponderating element the whole, to the intense disgust of both the others? It will be none too easy a task, sir, I think, to form an Executive Council with its three members for Lower Canada, and satisfy the somewhat pressing exigencies of her creeds and races.

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Let me first take one feature of the scheme, or, I might say, one absence of a feature from the scheme-the non-provision of anything like provin cial constitutions. We are not told about them; they are kept back completely in the dark; it is part of the scheme that we are not to know what it means them to be. It is part of the scheme, too, from all appearance, that they may not be at all alike. For anything I can see, Nova Scotia will have a right under this scheme to devise a system of responsible government, with a cabinet and two branches of the legislature. New Brunswick, if it pleases, may have only one legislative body, with or without responsible government. So may the Prince Edward Island people have anything they like; and the people of Newfoundland may do what they like, and so may we in Canada. Lower Canada may even have a constitution of one kind, and Upper Canada one of a totally different kind. There may be no two of our six or more local constitutions framed on the same model. It seems to be meant that these constitutions shall be as varied as the people of the different provinces may see fit to make them; nay, there are even left to the people of the different provinces the same large powers for amending them afterwards. To be sure there is the grand power of disallowance by the Federal Government, which we are told, in one and the same breath, is to be possessed by it, but never exercised.

Hon. Atty. Gen. Cartier-The presumption is, it will be exercised in case of unjust or unwise legislation.

Mr. Dunkin-The hon. gentleman's presumption reminds me of one, perhaps as conclusive, but which Dickens tells us failed to satisfy his Mr. Bumble. That henpecked beadle is said to have said, on hearing of the legal presumption that a man's wife acts under his control: "If the law presumes anything of the sort, the law's a fool-a natural fool!" If this permission of disallowance rests on a presumption that the legislation of our provinces is going to be unjust or unwise, it may be needed; but under that idea, one might have done better either not to allow, or else to restrict within narrower limits, such legislation. If the promised non-exercise of the power to disallow rests on a presumption that all will be done justly and wisely in the provincial legislatures, the legislative power is well given; but then there is no need, on the other hand, for the permission to disallow. I repeat, this system, or no-system, aims at nothing like uniformity between the general and local constitutions, or between the local constitutions themselves; and in this respect, it is essentially at variance with the much wiser system adopted in the United States. It further allows of no real autonomy; in fact, the only trace of uniformity it can be said to have about it, consists in its disallowance of all autonomy to the provinces. Now, let me take up those few features that undoubtedly are given to us, as characterizing our provincial system. Wide as we have seen the latitude is which the provinces may take in framing their constitutions, there are a few matters as to which the system lays down an iron rule. There is the