CONSIDERABLE as they had been, the other labours with which Cartier had been connected could not be compared in importance with the part he played in the building up of confederation. We find him here in an altogether new field, where the whole future of his country is at stake. To dispose of or to change the political status of a country is no mean enterprise, involving as it does such grave responsibilities/Jn breaking up the old union of 1841, to form a new compact, was not the French Canadian leader placing in jeopardy the privileges and rights conquered by his people during the preceding fifty years') Was he not giving up well-known and well-defended positions for unknown and uncertain ones? Such were the questions asked on all sides, when Lower Canada was made aware that for the fourth time since 1760, its constitution was to undergo a change. If the greater number of Canadian delegates who had been entrusted with the task of framing a new charter under which all the British provinces of North America would hereafter live, went into the Quebec conference with a light heart, it would not be so with Cartier. To the former, confederation involved no new risks; it was only similar institutions in a wider sphere, whilst with Cartier, the question arose how the peculiar institutions of his compatriots should be secured in the proposed union. What would become of their laws and their system of education? It was proposed, it is true, to hedge their liberties with all possible guarantees, but had not experience demonstrated that constitutions borrow a great part of their value from the men entrusted with their operation?

In spite of the great responsibilities which were looming on the track of the proposed union, it was Cartier who first of all made it a live issue. It is true that as far back as 1836 such a scheme had been mooted by a few public men, but it had never, until 1858, been brought before the people of the country as a question upon which action could be taken. In that year, when premier of Canada, Cartier had placed the following announcement in the speech from the throne:

"I propose in the course of the recess to communicate with Her Majesty's government and with the governments of the sister colonies on another matter of very great importance. I am desirous of inviting them to discuss with us the principles upon which a bond of a federal character, uniting the provinces of North America, may perhaps hereafter be practicable."

In the summer following this session, Cartier, Gait and Rose went to England with a view  of obtaining the concurrence of the British government in the union scheme and their authority to consult the maritime provinces. The scheme, however, fell through because the public men of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick thought that the' people of those provinces had not had time to consider the question.

In 1862, things in Canada were going from bad to worse and a dead-lock was a possibility of the near future. It was then that the scheme of confederation was revived. At the very outset of the negotiations, Cartier, bearing in mind his task with its full responsibilities, laid down this as the sine qua non of his acquiescence, that confederation should be established on the federal principle. His colleagues would have preferred a legislative union as a more simple and less expensive form of government.

"I have again and again stated in the House," said John A. Macdonald, on introducing the resolutions adopted at the Quebec conference, " that if practicable, I thought a legislative union would be preferable .... but on looking at the subject in the conference and discussing the matter as we did .... we found that such a system was impracticable. In the first place, it would not meet with the assent of the people of Lower Canada . . . there was as great a disinclination on the part of the Maritime Provinces to lose their individuality as separate political organizations." But there is no doubt that in the case of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the objections were not insuperable, being matters of sentiment, while in Quebec conscience and national feeling were concerned. Speaking on this point, Cartier corroborated Macdonald's statement: "I know that many members in this House and a large number of persons in Upper Canada and in the Maritime Provinces, think that a legislative union would have suited the country better. My opinion is that one government only could not take charge in a useful manner of private and local interests of the different parts of the country." This view is certainly correct, although the federal form of government is the most difficult to work out, its success depending chiefly upon the moderation, common sense and intelligence of the people. When these requirements were put to the test in after years, they were sometimes found wanting. It can thus be said, in view of the above statements, that to Cartier we owe the form of our present government. In forcing his conviction in this matter on his colleagues he was impelled by a strong sense that the federal system alone could secure to Lower Canada its peculiar institutions, and also by the stern fact that his influence could not bring his countrymen to accept legislative union, which had proved a failure in the case of Lower and Upper Canada.

But was not the federal system a close imitation of the constitution of the United States which Cartier had been wont to depict as so far inferior to the British charter? Cartier and Macdonald did their very best to wipe out that impression which was spreading during the progress of the discussion of the proposed British North America Bill, but they made artful explanations without giving satisfactory proof of their contention. Cartier held that the two instruments were different in this: that under the constitution of the United States the authority came from the people, after the formula e pluribus unurn, and the different states gave power to the central government, but with us, life was derived from the crown which lent activity to the central government and also delegated it to the provincial administrations, the authority in this case being derived from one common spring of honour and force—ab uno plures. Here we are in the midst of fictions and the argument does not stand the test of a very close examination. It is a distinction with no real difference. Thrusting sophistries aside, we have in Canada and in the United States authority derived from the people. It is they who framed the constitution and who gave it life; in Canada it remained for the crown to set the machine in motion. But even this power has hardly a real existence, so democratic have our institutions become.

According to Macdonald, it was the aim of the fathers of the constitution, to form a strong central government. "In framing the constitution, care had been taken to avoid the mistake and weakness of the United States system, the primary error of which was the reservation to the different states of all the powers not delegated to the general government. We must reverse the process by establishing a strong central government, to which shall belong all powers not specially conferred on the provinces." Time and events have made clear that the authors of the constitution have failed to carry out their intention. No one will gainsay the assertion that the American federal power emerged from the war of secession, having crushed state pretentions, much stronger than the Canadian federal government could ever expect to be, especially after having failed in a contest with the weakest province of the Dominion, over the Manitoba school difficulty.

It is curious to note here how the two foremost authors of confederation unconsciously followed the natural tendency of their minds, perhaps under the pressure of diverging or conflicting interests. Cartier, never unmindful of the great responsibilities which the peculiar situation of his countrymen made him assume, exalted the rights of the provincial administrations as being of paramount importance. The autonomy of local government involved within its precincts all that was held dear by his countrymen.

When the different states which had separated from England were called upon to give up a certain share of their autonomy to invest a central government with great powers, a conflict of views arose amongst their public men on that point. Some favoured a large concentration of authority whilst others desired to retain as much independence as possible in the state organizations. The former were misnamed federalists and their opponents anti-federalists, or republicans. Macdonald's notions were not unlike those of Hamilton, Jay and Madison, the friends of centralization, whilst Cartier was of President Jefferson's cast of mind, who, on assuming office, announced as his policy "the support of the states' governments in all their rights as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns."

Has not the operation of our institutions during the last thirty years shown that whenever a difficulty about federal and provincial rights occurred between the Dominion and the local governments, the latter has carried the day in spite of the central power, and almost in defiance of its order? Take for instance the Ontario Rivers and Streams Act, which the Dominion disallowed and which the Ontario legislature re-enacted. The small province of Manitoba took the same stand in the matter of her railway legislation. It is within the recollection of everyone that the Dominion cabinet, although persuaded that the Manitoba School Act of 1871 was ultra vires, did not dare to veto that measure for the obvious reason that Dominion interference would not have been accepted, and that if the act had been disallowed it would have been placed again by the Manitoba legislature upon the statute book. Another cause of recalcitrant provincialism occurred when the Dominion government issued their remedial order to Manitoba, which was so ostentatiously disobeyed. All this goes to prove that the strong central government which Macdonald intended to establish at Ottawa very often stands powerless in the face of even the smallest province, and it also shows one of the weak points of all federation: the want of coercive power.

Confederation did not give all that was expected and that was promised for it. It is not the privilege of great men to foresee all the consequences of their best laid plans; even genius is often found deficient in foresight. But, taken altogether, it has been a great success, and, as far as the province of Quebec is concerned, a decided improvement on the regime which it superseded. This latter was a legislative union under which the religious and the racial interests were secured only by equality of representation between the two provinces, and that safeguard would have been removed if party lines had given way to national antagonism. As population increased more rapidly in the western province than in the eastern, equality of representation was doomed to disappear in time, for representation by population, just in itself, was bound to prevail, carrying with it the domination of Upper Canada over Lower Canada, which would have placed the French Canadians at the tender mercies of a hostile majority. The great benefit of the federal union resided in this, that it constituted the province of Quebec like an impregnable fortress in the midst of the other provinces. There were safely ensconced all that the French Canadians held dear. To the federal government were abandoned the material interests of the country which could not be disassociated and over which Quebec could still exert its share of control through representatives at Ottawa. It cannot be denied that under confederation the advance of Canada in all branches of trade and in public wealth has gone beyond all expectations. It can stand comparison with the most prosperous country of the world, the United States. It is sufficient to prove this that the volume of our trade had increased from seventy-three millions in 1868 to nearly three hundred millions in 1891. It would be fortunate indeed were there reason to believe that similar progress, or some approach to it, had taken place in the intellectual condition of our people.

The battle over the confederation scheme in Lower Canada was fierce and long. Cartier had to deal with clever and strong opponents, who, however, in condemning confederation, did not show how otherwise the country could have been rescued from its long-standing troubles and the deadlock which was near at hand between Lower and Upper Canada, with antagonism always on the increase. A sort of zollverein was suggested, but in such a vague and unprecise form that nobody could see what remedy it would have brought to cure existing evils. Some critics hinted that it was Car-tier's duty to revert to the state of things which existed before the union of 1840, forgetting that the English of Lower Canada could never have accepted a French parliament and isolation from the other provinces. He was also blamed for taking a part at all in the federal scheme. This would have been a suicidal policy, for any changes evolved at the time without the concurrence of the French element would have been more or less against their interests. Lower Canada was placed between confederation and annexation to the United States. The French Canadians were, however, strongly opposed to the alternative, as any union with the Americans portended their absorption through the irresistible power of fusion dominant in the United States. It must be remembered that Cartier and his friends had not a free hand in this matter, that the opinions of English-speaking Canadians had to be taken into account, and that any schemes, to be accepted, must partake of the character of a compromise between the different sections of the country. After confederation, when the question had been finally decided by the people, the opponents of Cartier loyally laid down their arms and did their best to make the new constitution a success. As it was their privilege and duty, they formed themselves into an opposition party in order to criticize the measures and policy of the government, with the lawful ambition to take their place at the helm. It is a happy country where public men confine their criticism to the administration of affairs, without assailing the constitution.