1867 Read Online Free Page B

the French-Canadian community –
if
the assembly achieved its potential through responsible government. On that basis, he secured massive support from the francophone electorate for the policy of responsible government. In the 1840s, responsible government produced an alliance between Catholic francophones (otherwise suspicious of English Protestant power) and Protestant anglophones (otherwise rather anti-Catholic and anti-French). That alliance put the reformers in power in 1848, under the joint leadership of LaFontaine and his partner from Canada West, Robert Baldwin.
    Once responsible government (and francophone influence) was assured, however, the voters of Canada East had what they needed from that reformist alliance. They drifted toward more-conservative concerns – notably the preservation of their language, faith, and traditions against English Protestant onslaughts. Reformers in Canada West also moved on – to issues such as separation of church and state. Since French Canadians understood these as code for an assault upon their religion, indeed upon their whole society, the alliance of English and French reformers soon fell apart. As long as George Brown’s newspaper was raising the alarm about “papal aggression” and proclaiming “no permanent peace in Canada until every vestige of church domination is swept away,” there was not much likelihood of restoring an Anglo–French reform coalition. A new and longer-lasting partnership between French and English leaders of the union was forged. It was conservative rather than reform-minded. Its great names were George-Étienne Cartier, who was LaFontaine’s political heir, and John A. Macdonald, who was Brown’s nemesis.
    By the 1850s, when George Brown took a seat in the legislature, Canada West’s reformers had detached themselves from those of Lower Canada – and put themselves out of power. Brown seemed to have imprisoned himself in the role of regional spokesman, eyed with suspicion and hostility by most of Lower Canada and by advocatesof Anglo–French co-operation. The third great principle Brown came to advocate during the 1850s solidified his regional power, even as it seemed to preclude him from any larger role. This was the principle most of all that made Brown a governmental impossibility. He called it “rep-by-pop.”
    Representation by population is another apparently uncontroversial proposition. * It proposes that all votes should be of the same weight, and that communities of equal size should have equal representation in the legislature. In the union of the Canadas, however, representation by population had been overruled by a competing principle, sectional equality.
    When the union was made in 1841, sectional equality had been an essential part of Britain’s plan to control and assimilate the French-speaking population. Francophone Lower Canada, despite its larger population, had been compelled to accept only the same number of assembly seats as Upper Canada, instead of the clear majority that “rep-by-pop” would have given it. But within a decade, constant immigration to Upper Canada – the Brown family was part of that migration – had reversed the proportions. Suddenly sectional equality became a protection for the French Canadians against their shrinking relative numbers. At just that point, Upper Canadian reformers began to campaign for rep-by-pop – more seats for Upper Canada, in effect, and probably more seats for Upper Canadian reformers.
    It is easy – it was easy in the 1850s – to make sectional equality seem little more than cynical gerrymandering. Each section of the united Canadas, after all, had denounced sectional equality when its numbers were larger and embraced it when outnumbered. But the defence of sectional equality was, in its way, as principled asrep-by-pop. One of its great defenders was an old reform ally of George Brown, Francis Hincks.
    Francis Hincks is mostly known to historians as a master financier.