Chapter XL: The British American League

The Union of all the British American colonies now forming the Dominion of Canada, was discussed at Quebec as long ago as the year 1815; and at various times afterwards it came to the surface amid the politics of the day. The Tories of 1837 were generally favourable to union, while many Reformers objected to it. Lord Durham's report recommended a general union of the five Provinces, as a desirable sequel to the proposed union of Upper and Lower Canada.

But it was not until the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill, that the question of a larger confederation began to assume importance. The British population of Montreal, exasperated at the action of the Parliament in recognising claims for compensation on the part of the French Canadian rebels of 1837--that is, on the part of those who had slain loyalists and ruined their families--were ready to adopt any means--reasonable or unreasonable--of escaping from the hated domination of an alien majority. The Rebellion Losses Bill was felt by them to imply a surrender of all those rights which they and theirs had fought hard to maintain. Hence the burning of the Parliament buildings by an infuriated populace. Hence the demand in Montreal for annexation to the United States. Hence the attack upon Lord Elgin's carriage in the same city, and the less serious demonstration in Toronto. But wiser men and cooler politicians saw in the union of all the British-American Provinces a more constitutional, as well as a more pacific remedy.

The first public meetings of the British American League were held in Montreal, where the movement early assumed a formal organization; auxiliary branches rapidly sprang up in almost every city, town and village throughout Upper Canada, and the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada. In Toronto, meetings were held at Smith's Hotel, at the corner of Colborne Street and West Market Square, and were attended by large numbers, chiefly of the Tory party, but including several known Reformers. In fact, from first to last, the sympathies of the Reformers were with the League; and hence there was no serious attempt at a counter demonstration, notwithstanding that the Government and the _Globe_ newspaper--at the time--did their best to ridicule and contemn the proposed union.

The principal speakers at the Toronto meetings were P. M. Vankoughnet, John W. Gamble, Ogle R. Gowan, David B. Read, E. G. O'Brien, John Duggan and others. They were warmly supported.

After some correspondence between Toronto and Montreal, it was arranged that a general meeting of the League, to consist of delegates from all the town and country branches, formally accredited, should be held at Kingston, in the new Town Hall, which had been placed at their disposal by the city authorities. Here, in a lofty, well-lighted and commodiously-seated hall, the British American League assembled on the 25th day of July, 1849. The number of delegates present was one hundred and forty, each representing some hundreds of stout yeomen, loyal to the death, and in intelligence equal to any constituency in the Empire or the world. The number of people so represented, with their families, could not have been less than half a million.

The first day was spent in discussion (with closed doors) of the manner in which the proceedings should be conducted, and in the appointment of a committee to prepare resolutions for submission on the morrow. On the 26th, accordingly, the public business commenced.[18]

The proceedings were conducted in accordance with parliamentary practice. The chairman, the Hon. George Moffatt, of Montreal, sat on a raised platform at the east end of the hall; at a table in front of him were placed the two secretaries, W. G. Mack, of Montreal, and Wm. Brooke, of Shipton, C. E. On either side were seated the delegates, and outside a rail, running transversely across the room, benches were provided for spectators, of whom a large number attended. A table for reporters stood on the south side, near the secretaries' table. I was present both as delegate and reporter.

The business of the day was commenced with prayer, by a clergyman of Kingston.

Mr. John W. Gamble, of Vaughan, then, as chairman of the committee nominated the previous day, introduced a series of resolutions, the first of which was as follows:--

"That it is essential to the prosperity of the country that the
tariff should be so proportioned and levied, as to give just and
adequate protection to the manufacturing and industrial classes
of the country, and to secure to the agricultural population a
home market with fair and remunerative prices for all
descriptions of farm produce."

Resolutions in favour of economy in public expenditure, of equal
justice to all classes of the people, and condemnatory of the
Government in connection with the Rebellion Losses Bill, were
proposed in turn, and unanimously adopted, after discussions
extending over two or three days. The principal speakers in
support of the resolution were J. W. Gamble, Ogle R. Gowan, P.
M. Vankoughnet, Thos. Wilson, of Quebec, Geo. Crawford, A. A.
Burnham,--Aikman, John Duggan, Col. Frazer, Geo. Benjamin, and
John A. Macdonald.

At length, the main object of the assemblage was reached, and
embodied in the form of a motion introduced by Mr. Breckenridge,
of Cobourg.

That delegates be appointed to consult with similar delegates
from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, concerning the
practicability of a union of all the provinces.

This resolution was adopted unanimously after a full discussion.
Other resolutions giving effect thereto were passed, and a
committee appointed to draft an address founded thereon, which
was issued immediately afterwards.

On the 1st November following, the League reassembled in the
City Hall, Toronto, to receive the report of the delegates to
the Maritime Provinces, which was altogether favourable. It was
then decided, that the proper course would be to bring the
subject before the several legislatures through the people's
representatives; and so the matter rested for the time.

In consequence of the removal of the seat of government to
Toronto, I was appointed secretary of the League, with Mr. C. W.
Cooper as assistant secretary. Meetings of the Executive
Committee took place from time to time. At one of these Mr. J.
W. Gamble submitted a resolution, pledging the League to join
its forces with the extreme radical party represented by Mr.
Peter Perry and other Reformers, who were dissatisfied with the
action of the Baldwin-Lafontaine-Hincks administration, and the
course of the _Globe_ newspaper in sustaining the same. This
proposition I felt it my duty to oppose, as being unwarranted by
the committee's powers; it was negatived by a majority of two,
and never afterwards revived.

I subjoin Mr. Gamble's speech on Protection to Native Industry, reported by myself for the _Patriot_, July 27, 1849, as a valuable historical document, which the _Globe_ of that day refused to publish:

J. W. Gamble, Esq., in rising to support the motion said:--He
came to this convention to represent the views and opinions of a
portion of the people of the Home District, and to deliberate
upon important measures necessary for the good of the country,
and not to subserve the interests of any party whatever; to
consider what it was that retarded the onward progress of this
country in improvement, in wealth, in the arts and amenities of
life; why we were behind a neighbouring country in so many
important respects. Unless we made some great change, unless we
learnt speedily how to overtake that country, it followed in the
natural course of events that we should be inevitably merged in
that great republic, which he (Mr. G.) wished to avoid. The
political questions which would engage the attention of the
convention, embracing gross violations of our constitution and
involving momentous consequences, were yet of small importance
when compared with the great question of protection to native
industry. A perusal of the statutes enacted by the Parliament of
Great Britain from the time of the conquest of Canada to the
abolition of the corn laws, for the regulation of the commercial
intercourse of this colony, leads to the unavoidable conviction,
that the first object of the framers of those statutes was to
protect and advance the interests of the people of England and
such of them as might temporarily resort to the colony for the
purpose of trade; and that when their tendency was to promote
colonial interests, that tendency was more incidental than their
chief purpose. That such a course of legislation was to be
expected in the outset it was but reasonable to suppose, and
that a continuation of enactments in the same spirit should be
suffered by the British Canadians, with but few and feeble
remonstrances on their part, might be accounted for and even
anticipated when we remember the material of which a large
portion of the original population of Canada was composed. Ten
thousand U. E. Loyalists had emigrated from the United States
to Upper Canada in 1783, rather than surrender their allegiance
to the British throne; their enthusiastic attachment to the
Crown of Great Britain had made them ever prone to sacrifice
their own, to what had been improperly termed the _interests of
the empire_. He (Mr. G.) was himself a grandson of one of those
U. E. Loyalists, and might be said to have imbibed his British
feelings with his mother's milk. He remembered the time well,
when the utterance of a word disrespectful of the Sovereign was
looked upon as an insult to be resented on the spot. Remembering
all this, and that these same people, Canada's earliest
settlers, rather than live under a foreign government, though
the people of that government were their own countrymen, yea,
their very kinsmen and relatives--that they had forsaken their
cultivated farms, their lands and possessions, to take up their
abode with their families in a wilderness; remembering these
circumstances, it need excite no surprise that the old colonial
commercial system was allowed to continue without any very
weighty remonstrance from the colonists, until it expired in
Britain's free trade policy. Although that same system,
primarily intended for Britain's benefit, was not calculated to
advance the settlement, the improvement, or the wealth of
Canada, with equal rapidity to that of the adjoining country,
whose inhabitants enacted their own commercial regulations with
a view to their own immediate benefit and without reference to
that of others. The United States had legislated solely for
their own interests. Our commercial legislation, instead of
consulting exclusively our good, had been directed for the
benefit of England. If that same policy were continued
hereafter, to overtake our neighbours would be hopeless, and he
reiterated that the consequences would be fatal to our connexion
with Great Britain.

We must protect the industry of our country. The people of this
country surely are the first entitled to the benefits of the
markets of their country. He had been brought up a commercial
man, and until lately held to the free trade principles of
commercial men. From his youth, Smith's "Wealth of Nations" had
been almost as familiar to him as his Catechism, and was
regarded with almost equal deference; but practical experience
had of late forced upon him the conviction, that that beautiful
theory was not borne out by corresponding benefits; he had
looked at its practical results, and was constrained to
acknowledge, in spite of early predilections, that that theory
was a fallacy. He had adopted the views of the American
Protectionists as those most consonant with sound reason and
common sense. Their arguments he looked upon as unanswerable;
with them he believed that economists and free trade advocates
had overlooked three principles which to him appeared like
economic laws of nature, and the disregard of which alone was
sufficient to account for the present position of our country.
They say, and he believed with them, that the earth, the only
source of all production, requires the refuse of its products to
be returned to its soil, or productiveness diminishes and
eventually ceases. That the expense of carriage to distant
markets not only wastes the manure of animals on the road, but
that the expenses of freight and commissions, of charges to
carriers and exchangers, are in themselves a _waste_, avoided by
a home market whenever the _consumer_ is not separated from the
_producer_; and that those productions fitted for distant
markets, such as wheat and other grains, are only _yielded by
bushels_, while those adapted for the use of the home consumer,
and unsuited for distant transportation, as potatoes, turnips,
cabbages, are yielded by tons. These were facts well worthy the
attention of our agriculturists--eight-tenths of our whole
population--and which could not be too often or too plainly
placed before them. It is essential to the prosperity of every
agricultural country that the consumer should be placed side by
side with the producer, the loom and anvil side by side with
the plough and harrow. The truth of these principles is well
known in England, and practically carried out there by her
agriculturists every day. She possesses within herself unlimited
stores of lime, chalk and marl, besides animal manures, valued
in McQueen's Statistics in 1840 at nearly sixty millions of
pounds, more than the then value of the whole of her cotton
manufactures. Yet England employs whole fleets in conveying
manure, guano and animal bones to her shores; yes, has ransacked
the whole habitable globe for materials to enrich her fields,
and yet, forsooth, her economists and hosts of other writers
would fain persuade all nations and make the world believe, that
all countries are to be enriched by sending their food, their
raw produce, their wheat, their rye, their barley, their oats
and their grains to her market, to be eaten upon her ground,
which thus receives the benefit of the refuse of the food of
man, while that of animals employed in its carriage is wasted on
the road, and the grower's profits are reduced by freight to her
ship-owners and commission to her merchants. Behold the
inconsistency, behold the practice of England and the preaching
of England; behold how it is exemplified in the countries most
closely in connection with her: look at Portugal, "our ancient
ally." By the famous Methuen treaty she surrendered her
manufactures for a market for her wines, and thus separated the
_producer_ from the consumer. From that hour Portugal declined,
and is now--what?--the least among the nations of the earth.
Next, let us direct our attention to the West India Islands.
They do not even refine their own sugar, but import what they
consume of that article from England, whither they send the raw
material from which it is made, in order, he supposed, to enrich
the British ship-owner with two voyages across the Atlantic, and
the British refiner in England, instead of bringing him and his
property within their own islands. Such is their commercial
policy; and with free trade the West India planter has been
ruined, the prospects of the country are blighted, and discord
and discontent pervade the land. Next comes the East Indies:
partial free trade with England has destroyed her manufactures.
He (Mr. G.) could well recollect when Indian looms supplied the
nation with cottons; here in Canada they were the only cottons
used: he appealed to the chairman, who could corroborate his
statement, and must remember the Salampores and Baftas of India.
But Arkwright's invention of the spinning jenny enabled England
to import the raw material from India, and send back the
finished article better and cheaper than the native operatives
could furnish it. It was forced into their markets in spite of
their earnest protests, which only sought for the imposition on
British goods in India of like duties to those levied upon
Indian products in Britain, and which was denied them. Now, mark
the result. The agriculture of India is impoverished, many
tracts of her richest soil have relapsed into jungle, and both
her import and export trade are now in a most unsatisfactory
state--at least so says the "Economist," the best free trade
journal in England. India was prosperous while clothed in
fabrics the work of her own people. What country can compare
with her in the richness of her raw products? But England forced
her to separate the producer and consumer, and bitter
fruits--the inevitable results of the breach of that economic
law of nature which requires they should be placed side by
side--have been the consequence. Turn next to Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick and our own Canada. Are those countries in a
prosperous condition? (No, No!) Are we prosperous in Canada? The
meeting of this convention tells another story. Canada exports
the sweat of her sons; she sends to England her wheat, her
flour, her timber, and other raw produce, the product of manual
labour, and receives in return England's cottons, woollens and
hardwares, the product of labour-saving, self-acting and
inexpensive machinery. We separate the consumer and the
producer; we seek in distant markets a reward for our labour; it
is denied us, and this suicidal policy must exist no longer.
Behold its effects in our currency; not a dollar in specie can
we retain, unless it is circulated at a greater value than it
bears in the countries of our indebtedness, while our government
is obliged to issue shin-plasters to eke out its revenue. The
true policy for Canada is to consult her own interests, as the
people of the United States have consulted theirs, irrespective
of the interests of any other country. Leave others to take care
of themselves. Our present system has inundated us with English
and Foreign manufactures, and has swept away all the products of
our soil, all the products of our forests, all the capital
brought into the country by emigration, all the money expended
by the British Government for military purposes, and leaves us
poor enough. Why does not Canada prosper equally with the
adjacent republic? He had often asked the question. "Oh, the
Americans have more enterprise, more capital, and more
emigration than Canada," is the universal answer. It is true,
these are causes of prosperity in the Union, but they are
secondary causes only; in the first instance, they are effects,
the legitimate effects of her commercial code, which protects
the industry of her citizens, stimulates enterprise and largely
rewards labour. Why does the poor western emigrant leave
Canada?--because in the union he gets better reward for his
labour. * * * * This was strictly a labour question. He desired
not to see the wages of labour reduced until a man's unremitting
toil procured barely sufficient for the supply of his animal
wants--he desired to behold our labourers, mechanics, and
operatives a well fed, well clothed and well educated part of
the community. The country must support its labour; is it not
then far preferable to support it in the position of an
independent, intelligent body, than as a mass of paupers--you
may bring it down, down, down, until, as in Ireland, the man
will be forced to do his daily work for his daily potatoes. He
had forgotten Ireland, a case just in point; she exports to
England vast quantities of food, of raw produce--who has not
heard in the English markets of Irish wheat, Irish oats, Irish
pork, beef and butter. Ireland has but few manufactures--she has
separated the producer and consumer, and has reaped the
consequence of exporting her food, in poverty, wretchedness and
rags. Ireland has denied the earth the refuse of its
productions, and the earth has cast out her sons. Ask the
reason--it is the con-acre system, says one; it is the absentee
landlords, says another. But if the absenteeism invariably
produced such results, why is it not the case in Scotland?
Scotland, since the union, has doubled, trebled, aye, quadrupled
her wealth, he knew not how often. Since the union, Scotland
exports but little food, the food produced by the soil is there
consumed upon the soil, and to her absentee landlords, she pays
the rent of that soil in the produce of her looms and her
furnaces. This led him to consider the policy of those countries
that support the greatest number of human beings in proportion
to their area. First, Belgium, the battle field of Europe; that
country had suffered immeasurably from the effects of war, yet
her people were always prosperous, quiet and contented, amid the
convulsions of Europe, for there the consumer and producer were
side by side. In Normandy, China, the North of England, and
South of Scotland, in the Eastern States, the same system
prevailed. The speaker that preceded him (Mr. Gowan), had said
that under the present system we were led to speculate in human
blood, upon the chance of European wars; it was too true, it was
horrible to contemplate; but he would say, was it not more
horrible still, to speculate upon the chance of famine? Had we
never looked, never hoped, for a famine in Ireland, England or
the continent of Europe, that we might increase our store
thereby!!! put money in our pockets!!! to such dreadful shifts,
dreadful to reflect upon, had the disregard of the great
principle he had enunciated reduced us. The proper remedy was to
protect our native industry, to protect it from the surplus
products of the industry of other countries--surplus products
sold in our markets without any reference to the cost of
production. Manufacturers look at home consumption in the first
place for their profits; that market being filled, they do not
force off their surplus among their own people--that might
injure their credit, or permanently lower the value of their
manufactures at home. They send their surplus abroad to sell for
what it will bring. Another view of the question was, that in
the exchanging produce for foreign manufactures, one half of the
commodities is raised by native industry and capital, and one
half by foreign. One half goes to promote native industry and
capital, and the other half foreign industry and capital, but if
the exchange is made at home, it stands to common sense, that
all the commodities are raised by native industry and capital,
and the benefit of the barter if retained _at home_, to promote
and support them. Where the raw material produced in any country
is worked up in that country, the difference between the value
of the material and the finished article is retained in the
country.

* * * * *

He would be met, he supposed, with a stale objection that protection is a tax imposed for the benefit of one class upon the rest of the community. Never was any assertion more fallacious. Admitting that the value of an article was enhanced by protection, which he (Mr. G.) did not admit, the rest of the community were benefited a thousand fold by that very protection; for instance, if a farmer paid a little more for his coat, was he not doubly, quadruply compensated for his wool, to say nothing of the market, also at his own door, for his potatoes, turnips, cabbages, eggs, and milk. But he denied that increase of price invariably followed a protective policy; that policy furnished the manufacturer a market at home _for quantity and quantity only_, while home competition, stimulated by a system securing a fair reward for industrial pursuits, soon brought down the manufactured article as low as it ought to be. He might be answered, your system will destroy our foreign trade altogether. The fact was the very reverse; the saving made by home consumption of food and raw produce on the soil where it was grown, to the producer, enabled that producer to purchase a greater quantity of articles brought from a distance, and made him a greater consumer of those very articles than when the value of the produce of his own farm was diminished by carriage to, and by charges in a distant market. He had now in his possession statistical tables of the United States, for successive periods, sufficient to convince the most sceptical, that during the periods their manufacturers had been most strongly protected, the average prices of such manufactures had been less, while the amount of imported goods had exceeded that of similar periods under low duties. Mr. Gowan had alluded to a case in which the very sand of the opposite shore was turned into a source of wealth by a glass manufactory, and also to the rocks of New Hampshire. He had also visited the Eastern States, and was delighted with the industry, the economy and intelligence of the people; but as to the country, he believed it would be a hard matter to induce a Canadian to take up his abode among its granite rocks and ice, yet those very rocks and that ice were by that thrifty people converted into wealth, and formed no small item in their resources.

Such are the results, the legitimate results of a protective policy, but the United States have not always followed that policy. The revolution did not do away with their prejudices in favour of British goods; for a long period after, nothing would go down but British cloths, cottons, and hardware. Then came the war of 1812, which showed them that they were but nominally independent while other nations supplied their wants; the war forced them to manufacture for themselves. After that war, excepting in some coarse goods, low _ad valorem_ duties were imposed; the consequence was, a general prostration of the manufacturing interests, followed by low prices in all agricultural staples. In 1824 recourse was again had to protection; national prosperity was soon visible; but why should he further detail the experiments made by that country? Suffice it to say, three times was the trial of free trade made, and three times had they to retrace their steps and return to the protective system, now so successfully in operation. England herself, with above one hundred millions of unprotected subjects, now declares the partially protected United States her best customer; in 1844 the amount of her exports to that country was eight millions, a sum equal to the whole of her exports to all her colonies. In 1846 the amount of cotton goods imported into the United States was one-fifth of their whole consumption, the amount of woollens likewise a fifth, and the amount of iron imported one-eighth of the entire quantity consumed. What proportion our importation of these articles in Canada bears to our consumption he had not been able to ascertain; but his conviction was, that if we adopted a similar commercial policy to that of the United States, the time would come when we should only import one-fifth of our cottons, one-fifth of our woollens, one-eighth of our iron; and when that time did come, and not till then, might we hope to cast our eye upon our republican neighbour without envying her greater prosperity.

[Footnote 18: Although no notice of the annexation movement in Montreal was taken publicly at the meeting, it was well known that in the discussions with closed doors, all violence, and all tendencies towards disloyalty were utterly condemned and repudiated. The best possible testimony on this point is contained in the following extract from the Kingston correspondence of the _Globe_ newspaper, of July 31st, 1849, the perusal of which now must, I think, rather astonish the well-known writer himself, should he happen to cast his eye upon these pages:

"The British Anglo-Saxons of Lower Canada will be most miserably disappointed in the League. They have held lately that they owed no allegiance to the crown of England, even if they did not go for annexation. _The League is loyal to the backbone_; many of the Lower Canadians are Free Traders, at least they look to Free Trade with the United States as the great means for promoting the prosperity of the Province--_the League is strong for protection as the means of reviving our trade_. * * * * Will the old Tory compact party, with protection and vested rights as its cry, ever raise its head in Upper Canada again, think you?"]