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The Ideological Origins of Canadian Confederation
Abstract
This article discusses the ideological origins of Canadian Confederation. As such it directly challenges a belief commonly held by Canadian political scientists and historians that Canadian Confederation was the product of a purely pragmatic exercise. The author argues instead that the ideological origins of the Canadian federal state may be traced to the debate that divided eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, America and France—a debate between the defenders of classical republican values and the proponents of a rising commercial ideology formulated during the Enlightenment. Only by understanding how this debate unfolded in nineteenth-century Canada can we understand the particular configuration of the Canadian state that emerged triumphant in the 1860s. Furthermore, an understanding of this debate also offers political scientists a broader context for interpreting long-held Canadian attitudes toward authority, the uses of political patronage, the public debt, capitalism, and the state and economic development.RésuméLes origines idéologiques de la Confédération canadienne posent un défi aux analystes (et notamment aux historiens) qui la conçoivent comme la conséquence d'un exercice purement pragmatique. L'auteur prétend au contraire qu'il faut tracer ces origines au débat idéologique qui a opposé la Grande-Bretagne, les États-Unis et la France: un débat entre les gardiens orthodoxes des valeurs républicaines et les promoteurs d'une idéologie commerciale en plein développement depuis le siècle des Lumières. Cen'est qu'en comprenant les répercussions de ce débat au Canada qu'on saura saisir justement la configuration particulière de l'État canadien à sa naissance. Du même coup, on élargira le contexte dans lequel on peut interpréter les opinions, considérées comme vraie depuis longtemps, sur l'autorité, le patronage, la dette publique, le capitalisme, l'État et le développement économique.
... For others, the understanding of history, identity and politics in Québec should not be detached from the exchange of ideas characteristic of both the history of England and the United States as conceptualised by John G.A. Pocock in his classic book, The Machiavellian Moment (Smith 1995;Greer 1994). Criticising English liberalism, Pocock has defended the view according to which eighteenth-and nineteenth-century England should be considered the heir to the civic humanism of the Italian Renaissance. ...
... Thus, without challenging Hartz's theory directly, Horowitz claimed that Canada's Loyalist tradition left an indelible imprint on Canadian political culture and identity. This argument, although more and more challenged, still informs debates in political science in Canada (Smith 1995;Mancke 1999); it serves to identify Canada's specificity and fuels its nationalism. ...
... As a Patriot spokesman reported to the British House of Commons: 'all are called Canadians who are on the Canadian side, and all are called not Canadians who are against the Canadian people' (quoted in Greer, 1993: 133). Moreover, political scientist Peter Jay Smith argues that the Rebellions anticipated the British North America Act of 1867 and the possibility of a meaningful democratic political community in Canada (Smith, 1995). The BNA Act was, to a large extent, a response to the democratic demands of the Patriots against the continued corruption and intransigence of British rule in Canada. ...
... Pour Peter J. Smith, l'économie politique et plus particulièrement les Lumières écossaises jettent les fondements idéologiques de la Confédération canadienne. Elle s'inscrit dans les débats qui traversent le XIX e siècle autour du capitalisme, de la terre, de la richesse et de la propriété 20 . Les idées des penseurs écossais vont en effet devenir centrales dans la culture dominante et dans la constitution de l'Empire britannique 21 . ...
This article argues that public debt financing facilitated the appropriation of the territories of Indigenous nations in the British settler colonies and does so through a detailed examination of Prince Edward Island’s public debt. The island’s government used public debt financing as a technique to direct capital into the colony, but to receive loans, the colonial government first needed credit. Settler-colonial credit derived from colonial governments’ claiming the territories of Indigenous nations as government assets. This history highlights the deeply racial characteristics embedded in the expansion of global public debt financing that characterized finance capitalism beginning in the 1820s. In this way, the unique history of the island and its “land question” can be placed into the broader global context of debt markets and processes of racial capital. Specifically, the 1853 Land Purchase Act used public borrowing to purchase lands from British landowners so that the island’s government could hold the land title. British landowners had their ownership rights secured despite the eighteenth-century Peace and Friendship Treaties that guaranteed the Mi’kmaq nation rights to their territory, which included Epekwitk, what the British named Prince Edward Island.
This article clarifies the intellectual origins of Canadian parliamentary government by situating Confederation within a specific strand of liberal political thought. My argument is that the Fathers of Confederation adhered to the political theory of parliamentarianism. Though liberal constitutionalists, the Fathers of Confederation expressly defended a parliamentary political framework that they considered superior to the American system of checks and balances—one characterized by a powerful elected assembly restrained by an unelected upper house, responsible ministers serving in Parliament, and a constitutional monarch. In elucidating the theory of parliamentarianism that underlies the political project of Confederation, my goal is not only to examine a problem in nineteenth-century Canadian political thought but to ground our current political situation within a larger historical perspective.
This article takes up the debate about Canadian democratization, arguing that Canada was not democratic in 1867 and that the various electoral reforms pursued throughout the late nineteenth century were not part of a democratic agenda. Instead, they were the product of competing political elites seeking to stabilize an emerging liberal order—a form of government responsive to the economically privileged—and to do so in a way that would favour their political party. Previous scholars have mischaracterized the creation of this liberal order as a democratic one, either by assuming that democracy was established in 1867, or mistaking what were essentially struggles over property rights for democratic rights. This has led to a misunderstanding of the factors that have contributed to establishing and reproducing Canada’s limited democracy.
How “historical” is Canadian political science? This paper sets out to answer this question through an analysis of historically oriented articles that have appeared in this journal from its first volume, in 1968, to 2015. We suggest that historical research in this journal is at once enduring and uneven, a pattern that we then explore in more detail in a case study, spanning forty years, of historical articles that focus on the interconnected themes of the constitution, courts, and federalism. The unevenness of this pattern suggests that the intellectual and methodological foundation of “historical” Canadian political science may not be as firm as it appears. We therefore conclude with a description of some methodological and conceptual tools, originally fashioned within the historically oriented subfield of American political development in the United States, that Canadian political scientists might deploy to probe important and enduring questions of Canadian politics.
In February and March 1867, the British parliament passed legislation to unite Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia into a single Dominion. The preamble to the British North America Act stated that ‘such a Union would conduce to the Welfare of the Provinces and Promote the Interests of the British Empire’.1 It is not always noted that Confederation passed through Westminster in the midst of the crisis of the Second Reform Act, the most divisive domestic political upheaval in the four decades between the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the defeat of Irish Home Rule in 1886. Yet the British North America Act was not passed in an imperial fit of absent-mindedness: the British were active participants in the process of Confederation, not mere onlookers. The main thesis of this study may be reduced to a single statement: between 1837 and 1867, the British came to favour the eventual creation of a union of British North America.2
We create a new dataset to test the influence of land inequality on long-run human capital formation in a global cross-country study and assess the importance of land inequality relative to income inequality. Our results show that early land inequality has a detrimental influence on math and science skills even a century later. We find that this influence is causal, using an instrumental variable (IV) approach with geological, climatic and other variables that are intrinsically exogenous.
A second major contribution of our study is our assessment of the persistence of numerical cognitive skills, which are an important component of modern human capital measures. Early numeracy around 1820 is estimated using the age-heaping strategy. We argue that countries with early investments in
numerical education entered a path-dependency of human capital-intensive industries, including skillintensive agriculture and services. The combined long-run effects of land inequality and human capital path-dependence are assessed for the first time in this article.
Constitutional arrangements can be said to have a structural logic in the sense that, among other things, they reflect a pattern of assumptions about the nature of government and a polity's particular brand of constitutionalism. It is the argument of this article that there is a basic inconsistency in the constitutional design of parliamentary federations and particularly those which have incorporated British parliamentary traditions. This is illustrated by an analysis of the constitutional evolution of Australia and Canada. Both systems have responded to changing popular expectations of the scope and function of government not by gradual evolution within a consistent constitutional tradition, but by major alteration to the mode of constitutionalism as first one and then another element of the rival institutional logics becomes dominant. The tension between these competing elements is used to chart the interaction between federalism, parliamentary institutions and notions of limited government.
The Canadian Constitution contains several distinctive rights not found in the United States Constitution. Indeed, the collective and community-based rights Canadians take for granted are inimical to American liberal traditions. Negative rights or interpretive provisions, such as the non obstante clause, are unique to Canada among Western democracies. The author argues that these rights derive from the country's historical concerns with religious and linguistic communities—especially in Quebec—and that they in turn condition how politics must be conducted in Canada.RésuméLa Constitution canadienne se distingue de la Constitution des États-Unis par la reconnaissance de droits collectifs. Ces droits, que les Canadiens tiennent pour évidents, se démarquent nettement d'une tradition américaine qui les rejette au nom du libéralisme individualiste. Des droits de type négatif et des provisions tels que la clause nonobstant font du Canada un cas unique parmi les démocraties occidentales. L'auteur attribue cette originalité à l'histoire d'un pays aux prises—surtout au Québec—avec des conflits communautaires religieux et linguistiques. La résolution de ces conflits dans le respect des particularismes communautaires a créé un modèle de gestion des affaires publiques qui continue d'influencer et de guider l'action politique.
This article seeks to provide an overview of the political thought of Egerton Ryerson (1803–1882), the influential political controversialist and educational reformer of nineteenth-century Upper Canada. It attempts to unravel Ryerson's thought in such a way as to go beyond earlier interpretations which have insisted that, despite the presence of certain countervailing reformist tendencies in his politics, Ryerson was at bottom a thorough conservative. In contrast to this view it is argued here that Ryerson was a thoroughly modernist thinker who accepted the basic teachings of the liberal tradition. It is also suggested that Ryerson was aware of certain key problems which a society premised on these teachings must inevitably face, problems such as narrow selfishness, private individualism and vulgar materialism. The article concludes that it was Ryerson's intention to correct these strong tendencies in liberal society by emphasizing the centrality of public spirit, moral cultivation and religious belief to a free polity's well-being.
Federalism is commonly described, in Canada and elsewhere, as a political expedient, or a constitutional arrangement, or a sociological characteristic of some societies. Federalism can also be a moral experiment that seeks to realize a way of life. Canada is an instance of such an experiment. Moreover, the moral value that grounds the Canadian experiment is not freedom or diversity, but fraternity. Federalism as fraternity has its beginnings in Cartier's vision of Confederation, and provides a vision of federalism that can sustain Canadians in their times of trouble.RésuméLe fédéralisme est habituellement décrit, au Canada comme ailleurs, comme une formule politique, ou un arrangement constitutionnel, ou encore comme une caractéristique sociologique de certaines sociétés. Le fédéralisme peut aussi être une expérience morale visant la réalisation d'un mode de vie. Le Canada est un exemple d'une telle expérience. La valeur morale sur laquelle le Canada repose est la fraternité et non la liberté ou la diversité. Le fédéralisme en tant que fraternité tire ses origines de la conception que Cartier avait de la Confédération et offre une vision du fédéralisme qui peut aider les Canadiens en ces temps difficiles.
Twenty years’ debate have revealed many weaknesses in the Hartz-Horowitz interpretation of conservatism, liberalism, and socialism in Canada, but it continues to be widely taught, for it provides a simple and appealing explanation for some striking differences between Canadian and American politics. This article argues that the interpretation is best understood as a form of neo-Marxism, that its basic weaknesses are most easily seen by examining its treatment of French Canada, and that its explanation for the exceptional strength of socialism in English Canada, linking socialism to toryism, can be strengthened by linking both socialism and toryism to nationalism.RésuméL'interprétation de la pensée politique canadienne a été grandement influencée par les idées de Louis Hartz. Sa soi-disant « théorie du fragment » fut formulée au cours des années cinquante pour expliquer la faiblesse du socialisme aux États-Unis. Les difficultés d'insérer le Canada français dans cette théorie démontrent les limitations. Les concepts qui la soutiennent déforment l'élément religieux et nient le libéralisme de la pensée politique canadienne-française. Néanmoins, la théorie, avec les modifications introduites par Gad Horowitz, a connu un grand succès au Canada anglais, peut-être à cause de son lien avec le nationalisme anglo-canadien.
The orthodox view that Canada's ideological tradition is more supportive of an active state cannot explain earlier innovations in social and labour policy in the United States. A neo-pluralist and neo-institutionalist synthesis is used to contrast these nations. Organic ideologies of labour, agrarian, business and professional groups reveal no consistent national differences in support for state action. Initial state interventions were similar and limited. But institutional development occurred in different contexts, producing more effective executive leadership in Canada. American policy was constrained by the Congress, with its opportunities for blocking, and by inadequate executive power. Frustration with inaction plus greater social well-being reduced demands in the US for state action. Canada's institutions allowed more creative policy and fostered greater support for state action, especially where the weak economy exacted costs on social groups. But constitutional change could replicate American gridlock, and reduce the capacity for new state action.
This paper examines the relation between constitutional property rights and the capacity of self-governing communities to
engage in regulatory innovation. Through the lens of “constitutional culture,” property rights in Canada's constitutional
order are compared with those in the United States. Thinking about constitutions in cultural terms aids in understanding the
changes occurring in national constitutional systems resulting from the constitution-like disciplines associated with economic
globalization. In the Canadian case, constitutional culture helps us to locate a constitutional property right with some normative
force that does not quite rise to the level of constitutional text. This attenuated right fits the conception of the Canadian
state as being better able to handle problems of transition and to take measures for societal self-protection. To some extent,
this capacity may be under threat, given the commitments of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and may move Canadian
constitutional culture further toward a U.S.-style limited government.
Some theories contend that national identity is dependent and contingent on having others. However, other theories suggest that national identity is based on traits that all members of the group share. These two competing ideas, called relational and unifying characters respectively, are explored using the two border cites of Niagara Falls, Canada and Niagara Falls, the United States. I argue that each national identity present, the Canadian and American, represent the two characters and that national identity can be viewed as a spectrum. Using content analysis, each city's newspaper is studied for its expression of both characters. Copyright (c) 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.
Wealth and Virtue reassesses the remarkable contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the formation of modern economics and to theories of capitalism. Its unique range indicates the scope of the Scottish intellectual achievement of the eighteenth century and explores the process by which the boundaries between economic thought, jurisprudence, moral philosophy and theoretical history came to be established. Dealing not only with major figures like Hume and Smith, there are also studies of lesser known thinkers like Andrew Fletcher, Gershom Carmichael, Lord Kames and John Millar as well as of Locke in the light of eighteenth century social theory, the intellectual culture of the University of Edinburgh in the middle of the eighteenth century and of the performance of the Scottish economy on the eve of the publication of the Wealth of Nations. While the scholarly emphasis is on the rigorous historical reconstruction of both theory and context, Wealth and Virtue directly addresses itself to modern political theorists and economists and throws light on a number of major focal points of controversy in legal and political philosophy.
RésuméLa science politique de Hume marque un point tournant dans l'histoire de la pensée politique. On pent mieux apprécier sa signification si on la considère comme une réponse structurée aux essais de construction d'une science politique fondée sur l'expérience tentés par les théoriciens de la tradition républicaine classique. Sa discussion des formes de gouvernement, du régime mixte en Grande Bretagne, du rôle des législateurs, de l'influence du gouvernement sur le comportement social, des sources de la puissance militaire, de la sagesse d'acquérir des colonies, des mérites de la politique de la Grèce et de Rome dans l'Antiquité, et en dernier lieu, sa conception d'une république parfaite, tons ces thèmes font partie d'une réponse systématique aux oeuvres de Machiavel, Harrington, Bolingbroke et autres. La conception de Hume du gouvernement constitutionnel dérive d'une application plus consistante du raisonnement expérimental an domaine politique. Sa science politique offre done une nouvelle théorie du gouvernement républicain qui a eu une profonde influence sur les penseurs américains, notamment Hamilton et Madison. Ces derniers y trouvèrent une conception du politique qui pouvait être appliquée aux grandes sociétés mercantiles.
To illuminate the debate about the traditional role of the state in Quebec, the article suggests Quebec's traditional political culture prior to the Quiet Revolution was shaped by the “dialectic of patronage.” Economic need encouraged Québécois to exploit the political process for advancement. The resulting preoccupation of the political process with patronage prompted two contradictory impulses—devotion to, yet suspicion of, the political process—and efforts to insulate “government” from “politics.” This perspective helps to reveal the thematic and chronological continuities in Quebec history, to illuminate the Quiet Revolution, and to evaluate competing theories of Quebec's social evolution.RésuméPour faire avancer le débat autour du rôle de l'état, le texte examine l'hypothèse que la culture politique du Québec d'avant 1960 a été façonnée par une « dialectique du patronage ». Les impératifs économiques ont mis le patronage au coeur de la vie politique québécoise, ce qui a suscité deux tendances contradictoires: dévotion envers la politique mais aussi méfiance à son égard. On essaie alors en vain d'isoler le «gouvernement » de la « politique ». Une telle hypothèse aide à comprendre les continuités, tant thématiques que chronologiques, dans l'histoire du Québec; à éclairer la nature de la Révolution tranquille; et à évaluer certaines théories courantes sur l'évolution sociale du Québec.
To the Honourable the Commons of Upper Canada Met in Assembly
- Gourlay Robert
Observations Upon a Union of the Colonies
- P S Hamilton
“The Genesis of the Confederation of Canada,”
- Allan
Plan for a General Legislative Union
- J B Robinson
The Old Attorney General
- B C U Cuthbertson
Of Civil Liberty,” in Essays
- Hume David
- Henderson