The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin
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confidence,” but John A. Macdonald reassured him that “we have hit upon the only practicable plan — I do not say the best plan … for carrying out the Confederation.” He went further, predicting that British North America would evolve into a unitary state: “you, if spared the ordinary age of men, will see both Local Parliaments & Governments absorbed in the General power. This is as plain to me as if I saw it accomplished but of course it does not do to adopt that point of view in discussing the subject in Lower Canada.” Was there was a deep-laid plot to smuggle some toxic provision into the constitution, a poison time-capsule that the forty-two-year-old Cameron would live to see destroy the provinces? Hardly. Macdonald was trying to hoodwink Cameron with “spin,” and even that failed. When Cameron argued for a legislative union in Parliament, Macdonald replied that French Canadians and Maritimers opposed a unitary scheme. “How, then, is it to be accomplished?” Macdonald knew that Cameron was a gentleman, and gentlemen did not divulge private correspondence.
Indeed, Macdonald rejected the best instrument for destroying the provinces. The Fathers of Confederation used New Zealand’s federal constitution as a quarry: it was even the source of the celebrated phrase “peace, order and good government.” That document gave the colony’s General Assembly power to abolish New Zealand’s constituent provinces, which it exercised in 1876. But when the Nova Scotian centralizer Jonathan McCully argued for copying this provision, Macdonald retorted: “That is just what we do not want.” John A. Macdonald did not plot to undermine Canada’s provinces.
The workload of the Quebec Conference took its toll. “John A. Macdonald is always drunk now,” commented one observer: he was found in his hotel room, a rug draped over his nightshirt, in front of a mirror declaiming Hamlet. The genial “John A.” was in overdrive, designing Canada’s new constitution at the expense of his own. After the conference, the delegates headed for a banquet in the nearly-complete Ottawa Parliament Buildings. Keynote speaker would be John A. Macdonald, “but illness ... compelled him to curtail his observations.” Two weeks later he was “still weak.” “I got a severe shock at Ottawa and was very near going off the books,” he admitted. Although his collapse was reportedly “induced by fatigue from assiduous attention to public affairs,” alcohol was a rumoured contributory cause. However, six years later, Macdonald was diagnosed as suffering from gallstones. His 1864 illness perhaps resulted from the banqueting that accompanied the Quebec Conference, too much rich food for his tender gallbladder.
While he was designing a new constitution, Macdonald was also running the existing government machine — and a time of continental crisis as the American Civil War moved to a close. Southern sympathizers marooned in Canada were arrested after raiding a bank in the border town of St. Albans, Vermont. In mid-December, 1864, C.J. Coursol, a lowly Montreal magistrate, freed them on a technicality, and the raiders even recovered their loot. Macdonald hoped to escape Quebec to spend Christmas in Kingston, “but if there are other such fools as Coursol in the world, I’ll never get away.” He established Canada’s first secret service, to collect intelligence on Southern sympathizers, and also to watch a new menace, the Fenians, an American-based paramilitary organization that aimed to free Ireland by attacking Canada.
In February 1865, the Canadian Parliament debated Confederation, with Macdonald leading off for the government. Unusually, he had rehearsed his speech. Indeed, his Quebec City landlord feared for Macdonald’s sanity when his distinguished tenant locked himself in his room and harangued the lodging-house cat. Even so, it was a low-key performance. Speaking for several hours, Macdonald outlined the unexciting details of the proposed structure, insisting that the Quebec scheme was a “treaty” agreed with the Maritimers, a package that Canada’s legislators must not amend. Calling Confederation “an opportunity that may never recur,” he concluded by hailing “the happy opportunity now offered of founding a great nation.” Calling it “the feeblest speech he had ever delivered,” Reformer Luther Holton claimed that the centralist Macdonald did not truly believe in the federal system he had helped devise. The charge rankled, and weeks into the marathon debate Macdonald delivered a sparkling extempore rebuttal: maybe his earlier speech had sounded feeble, “but as to my sentiments on Confederation, they were the sentiments of my life, my sentiments in Parliament years ago, my sentiments in the Conference, and my sentiments now.”
Macdonald’s speech was downbeat partly because it was the curtain-raiser to a comprehensive ministerial battery: Galt talked about finance, Brown and Cartier the advantages of Confederation to Upper and Lower Canada, while D’Arcy McGee supplied the oratorical fireworks. Another factor was disturbing news from the Maritimes, where public opinion was startled by the novelty of the project. Indeed, in New Brunswick, Premier Tilley had already been forced to call an election, rather than face a mutinous local Assembly. Overheated speeches in the Canadian Assembly might sound suspiciously triumphal on the Atlantic seaboard. Indeed, Macdonald unwittingly created problems for his Maritime allies by stating that the promised Intercolonial Railway would not form “a portion of the Constitution.” Tilley’s opponents jumped on the statement, claiming that the Canadians could not be trusted.
The news, early in March, that New Brunswickers had in fact voted against Confederation showed John A. Macdonald at his fighting best. He frankly accepted that Tilley’s election defeat was “a declaration against the policy of Federation,” but he roundly refused to abandon the cause. Rather, the setback was “an additional reason for prompt and vigorous action.” The New Brunswick reverse, “the first check that the project has received,” only highlighted the astonishing progress the issue had made since the formation of the coalition in June 1864.
“Things are not going on so badly with the Maritime Provinces,” he wrote optimistically. “In New Brunswick the question will ere long be carried. Nova Scotia is all right but hangs fire until New Brunswick is put straight.” In fact, this analysis reflected something more than Macdonald’s habitual tendency to put a positive spin on bad news. The New Brunswick result was closer than the landslide in seats suggested: several pro-Confederation candidates had only narrowly lost. In any case, the contest had been “the usual fight between the ins and the outs,” with “a lot of other influences at work” besides the Confederation issue. Although the new ministry was united in opposing the Quebec scheme, their reasons were contradictory: some opposed any union with Canada, others criticized the terms. Macdonald was right about Nova Scotia too. Premier Charles Tupper, with whom he had struck a rapport at Charlottetown, was masterfully controlling the local political agenda, keeping Confederation on the backburner to avoid its outright rejection. If Canada kept up the momentum, the New Brunswick ministry might well break up. The big prize for the Maritimers in Confederation was the Intercolonial Railway. Once New Brunswick changed sides, Nova Scotia would fall into line to ensure that Halifax and not Saint John became its Atlantic terminus. In April 1865, Tupper reckoned the situation could be turned around in twelve months.
Unfortunately, Macdonald did not have twelve months. The June 1864 coalition deal committed ministers to George Brown’s plan for a federation of the two Canadas if the wider union was not achieved by mid-1865. Dispatched to England in November 1864 to report on the Quebec Conference, George Brown had been hailed by Britain’s statesmen as the messenger of Confederation. Privately, however, he was relaxed about the setback in New Brunswick, and ready to insist on his Plan B. Macdonald announced that a delegation would be sent to London, to mobilize imperial support for Confederation. Brown had to be persuaded to make a second transatlantic trip within six months — getting him on board ship was crucial to keeping him on board politically. Accordingly, the delegation’s agenda was extended to include cross-border trade and the future of the Hudson’s Bay territories, both issues of concern to Brown. Cartier and Galt represented Lower Canada and Macdonald, despite a reluctance to travel, would speak for Upper Canada. Brown could not trust his rivals to represent Canada’s interests; they could not risk leaving him behind, where he might find some pretext to break up the coalition. So, in April 1865, Brown crossed the ocean once again, travelling with John A. Macdonald. Indeed, in the confined shipboard space, the two men had to pretend they were friends as well as allies.
The Canadian mission to Britain made a mighty splash, and the delegates received a welcome unprecedented for mere colonials. Famous statesmen engaged them in top-level conferences. They were presented to Queen Victoria, entertained by the Prince of Wales and given