THE GRIEVANCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA.
VO stroke of Imperial policy in recent times has more heartily LI moved the popular instinct in this country, than the Confede- ration of the British Colonies in North America. The disruption or discredit of the healthy young nationality which we have come to know as the "Dominion of Canada" would disappoint many hopes. We regret, therefore, all the more that the current of poli- tical affairs in Canada does not encourage those who have been sanguine that the burden of high responsibilities would give dignity and balance to the pettiness of Colonial politics. Since 1867, the Canadian Dominion has stood before the world as a great nation, with much of the power and many of the duties that previously the colonists conceived they might throw back without disgrace upon the mother-country. Yet there are points on which it is difficult to decide whether progress can be marked. The scandalous revelations which precipitated the overthrow of Sir John A. Macdonald's Ministry have been followed, and at the least paralleled, by the discreditable elec- tioneering practices traced home to the Administration of Mr. Mackenzie during the past year. The grossest charges are freely flung about against men in the front rank of the Ministry and the Opposition. On the real value of these ac- cusations we can express no opinion, but when it is possible to use them as common weapons in political conflict, we cannot avoid acknowledging that the general tone of public morality must be grievously relaxed. It is not possible to confine the effects of this laxity to the personal side of party politics. The bases of policy are necessarily affected by it, and the result is that the stability of the Dominion is endangered by a levity in making and breaking engagements which in private life would deserve a very hard name. We think it right that attention should be called in this country to the history of the successive compacts between the Dominion of Canada and British Columbia, because the public opinion of the mother- country is still feared and reverenced in the Colonies. If there be signs of moral weakness in the political conduct of the public men of the Dominion, it is wholesome that the failing should be corrected by the firm utterance of English sentiment. The effect of this check was clearly and use- fully apparent in the ease of Sir John A. Macdonald, and as stern a measure of justice ought to be dealt out to his Liberal successors.
The most recent and most important charge against Mr. Mackenzie's Government is indeed more serious than anything that has been alleged against Sir John Macdonald, because it involves an imputation of bad faith in the dealings between the members of the Confederation that strikes heavily at the stability of the "Union." We are far from saying that the errors of the Canadian Ministry are bad enough to justify a secessionist movement in British Columbia, but we cannot help feeling that they lend a pretext, difficult to be evaded or put aside, to disloyal agitators in the Pacific Settlements. It is only too certain that there are such agitators in British Columbia and Vancouver's Island. Their influence was overborne by the enthusiasm of British North-American nationality, which was stimulated by the foundation of the Dominion nine years ago ; but it was powerful before that time, and its championship of annexation to the United States was once a really formidable fact. The statesmen of the Dominion and of the mother-country combined to outweigh this anti-British tendency, and British Columbia was induced to enter the Confederation upon the express terms of an international bargain. It was stipulated that with all convenient speed the Pacific Settlements should be connected by railway with the chain of the Great Lakes, and the Canadian Pacific Railway, over which Sir John Macdonald's Ministry so fatally stumbled, was planned for the purpose of carrying out this compact. But the schemes favoured by Sir John Macdonald fell through when he was driven from power, and Mr. Mac- kenzie subsequently failed to arrange any satisfactory terms with railway capitalists. British Columbia then threat- ened impatiently to withdraw from the Union, on the indisputable ground that the terms on which proposals of confederation had been accepted had been abandoned and in substance repudiated. Lord Carnarvon's interference, however, was solicited, and a new agreement was arrived at through his mediation, which was accepted by the Local Government of British Columbia and by the Government of the Dominion. According to this understanding, the Do- minion Government once again pledged itself to complete the Railway to the Pacific, but demanded an extension of time to, the year 1890, and promised in the interval to finish the insular section of the line,—that is, a railway on Vancouver's Island from Esquimault to Nanaimo. It was further settled that, instead of an expenditure of one million and a half in the province of British Columbia, there should be an expenditure of two millions. This arrangement allayed the ewer of the Pacific Settlements which had been aroused by the palpable abandonment of the original terms, and all, it was supposed, would thenceforward go on smoothly. But when an application for the Parlia- mentary ratification of the bargain came to be presented to the Senate of the Dominion, it was found that although the Lower House had consented to the settlement which Mr. Mackenzie had concluded with Lord Carnarvon and the Re- presentatives of British Columbia, the Upper House was not of the same mind. The Bill for the Esquimault and Nanaimo Railway was rejected by the Senate at Ottawa, and Mr. Mac- kenzie took advantage of this circumstance to repudiate the contract altogether. He contended that the " Carnarvon compromise" was dependent on the sanction of the Canadian Parliament, and added insult to injury, as the Pacific settlers contend, by tendering the British Columbiana a paltry sum of three-quarters of a million of dollars, cash in hand, on con- dition that they were to put up with the broken bargain. The Minute in which this intimation of a second departure from public faith on the part of the Ottawa Administration was conveyed, was answered by the Local Government of British Columbia on the 4th of January last, in a sharply worded and closely reasoned despatch. The offer of £150,000 in cash is treated as not only inadequate as a money compensation for the renewed breach of a formal intercolonial compact, but as by implication an abandonment of the Pacific Railway scheme altogether.
The contention of the Canadian Government is that the Dominion is really too poor at present to undertake so mag- nificent a work as that of establishing railway communication between Lake Superiot and the Pacific, bat that—if true— does not appear to be a reason for refusing to carry out the Esquimault and Nanaimo scheme, as a link in the chain to be one day completed which must join the two oceans. The British Columbiana, however, suspect, and are not slow to assert, that selfish motives actuate the Canadians. The people of the cities on the Great Lakes are jealous, the men of the Far West affirm of the future of the Pacific ports ; they fear that the tide Of immigration and of trading prosperity may flow by them to the provinces beyond the Rocky Mountains, and to the splendid Western harbours. Political reasons, too, are alleged to interfere with the development of the "Great North-West" which would undoubtedly follow the construction of a railroad, or even a good waggon-road, through the basin of the Saskatchewan and the famous "Fertile Belt." The French and the Catholics of Lower Canada already feel that Quebec is overweighted by Ontario and the maritime provinces, all Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, and their astute politicians are labouring to create a new "Lower Canada" in Manitoba.
If the superior attractions of the Saskatchewan left the Red- River Settlement stranded on the edge of the current of migration, this hope would be disappointed. According to the suspicions of the British Columbiana, these Canadian jealousies, acting, for once, in unison, have determined to pre- vent the honest execution of the terms on the faith of which the Pacific Settlements linked their destiny with the Canadas. The British Colombians may be wrong, but it is the duty of the Canadian Government, even at some sacrifice, to prove them wrong. The Colonial Office, we fear, can do little to compose the dispute, unless the Canadian Parliament will nominate some member of the Ministry with full powers to enter into a con- tract that will not be broken on any pretence. The question, as it is openly stated by the Ottawa Government, is one of money merely ; and out of a mere money question, when the unity of the Dominion is at stake, some issue ought to be found without real difficulty, and must ultimately be found, what- ever objections are raised.
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