Sixty Years a Dominion
IT is pleasant to know that the Prince of Wales and Prince George, and the Prime Minister, are helping the Canadians to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of the Dominion, for it is a great event in the history of the British Empire. Mr. Baldwin—who, by a happy chance, was born sixty years ago this week, and therefore is just five weeks younger than the Dominion, proclaimed on July 1st, 1867—is returning the Canadian Prime Minister's visit at a most appropriate moment. He bears Great Britain's congratulations to Canada on a Diamond Jubilee of which both the Mother Country and the Dominion may be justly proud.
The British North America Act of 1867 marked a new era in our relations with our colonies. Pitt had indeed given Canada a relatively liberal form of govern- ment in 1791, and, after Lord Durham's Report, Melbourne's Ministry had endeavoured to pacify the two races in Canada by uniting them under one Parliament in 1840. But these reforms, beneficent as they were, came from Downing Street. The distinctive feature of the Act of 1867 was that it had been drafted by the Canadian statesmen themselves. As Lord Monck, the first. Governor-General of the Dominion, said in his inaugural speech to the first Dominion Parliament, the British Government " had pressed the principle of Union as a subject of great Imperial concern." But it -" had allowed to the provincial representatives every freedom in arranging the mode in which that principle should be applied." Macdonald, Cartier, and other leading Canadians had begun their .deliberations in Quebec and completed them in London, and their constitution for the Dominion was ratified by Parliament. Never before had Great Britain shown such complete trust in the Colonies as she now displayed, and she has been .amply repaid. It was a deliberate change of policy : . Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary in Lord Derby's Ministry, told the House of Lords that in the Bill " We were now laying the foundations of a great State, perhaps greater than that of England. But, come what might, we should yet rejoice that we were neither jealous'of the aspirations of these Colonies nor indifferent to their desires ; that we had fostered their growth, recognizing in that growth the pillars of our own greatness. By this measure we had set the crown to those free institutions which we gave them a quarter of a century ago - and, in setting that crown, we should remove for ever and a day all chances of disunion, and difference, and jealousy which could exist between the mother country and her child."
These prophetic and memorable words may well be recalled to-day. The experience of sixty years has justified every syllable of them.
• As Mr. Baldwin reminded his audiences at Quebec and Montreal, the Dominion Constitution has brought peace and harmony to the two races which inhabit the St. Lawrence valley, and has thus achieved a success that would have seemed almost impossible in Lord Durham's time. Success was not achieved in a day. The dispute over the Manitoba schools question, which involved the difficulties of language and religion, took years to settle. But the descendants of the French and English settlers have long since agreed to work together for the good of their common country, Canada. Moreover, it is well understood, as we see from the recent debates at Ottawa on the national status of Canada, that, however Canada's relations with Great Britain and the rest of the Empire may be modified, no attempt will be made to alter the privileged position of Quebec in the Dominion. The French Canadians are in a minority, but their rights are secure. The disappearance of the ancient feud has confirmed in the fullest measure the expectations of the framers of the constitution.
It is well also to remember that the constitution has stood the strain of many great changes and develop- ments. When the Dominion was formed, it included only Upper and Lower Canada—Ontario and Quebec, as we now call them—and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It was empowered to include all British North America, but Newfoundland stood out. The Dominion at once bought Rupert's Land in the North- West Territories from the Hudson Bay Company and out of the trackless prairies constituted the province of Manitoba in 1870. Then British Columbia, isolated on the Pacific coast beyond the Rockies, came in, and finally Prince Edward Island in 1873. A generation passed and the prairies beyond Manitoba had filled up sufficiently to be divided into the two new provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905. Meanwhile Ontario and Quebec had become great in industry as well as in agriculture, and of late years the incalculably rich mineral resources of these provinces have begun to be 'utilized. Yet the constitution, " similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom," as the Act of 1867 declares, has worked well throughout. It is much more elastic than that of the United States and affords greater scope for provincial experiments, as we have seen in regard to the liquor problem and other matters.
The Dominion's first task was to build the Inter- Colonial Railway, from Halifax to Quebec. It may be recalled here that the Imperial Parliament, despite a few Little Englanders like Roebuck, guaranteed the interest on 13,000,000 towards the cost of this line. Next the Dominion, to satisfy British Columbia, had to assist the private contractors who, after long and strenuous efforts, completed the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. This mighty enterprise made possible the settlement of the Western prairies and bound the scat- tered provinces together. Since then, Canada has advanced steadily in population and in material wealth. In sixty years her population has trebled, and no limit can be set to her progress. We can never forget the valiant help that she rendered in the Great War, and we look for her continued help to the British Commonwealth in time of peace. Long may Canada flourish I
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