Life And Times Of The Right Honourable Sir John A. Macdonald Book

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
CHAPTER II. POLITICAL UPHEAVALS. PERHAPS it were well to pause here and take a backward glance at the causes which brought about the troublous times referred to in the foregoing chapter. Half a century before the British Parliament divided the Province of Canada into Canada Upper and Lower, each division corresponding with what is to-day Quebec and Ontario. By this partition it was hoped that each province would enjoy constitutional peace and bound forward in the paths of progress. Burke, indeed, who had been caught and flung back into the most abject toryism by the influence of the French Revolution, saw a golden peace in the future for the C'anadas now, and regarded as guarantees for the abiding principle of the system the restrictions upon popular liberty placed in the Constitution. But many statesmen shook their heads, and Fox predicted that these vaunted safeguards of peace and an abiding constitution would prove the seeds of discord and disruption. And so it proved; though the evil laid in the marrow of the system did not break out into an active sore for many years afterwards. To each province was given a constitution supposed to reflect the virtues and the liberties of the constitution of the mother land. There was an elective chamber where the sturdy yeoman and simple habitant clad in their homespun came to legislate upon their allotted questions. There was an upper chamber, supposed to be a reflex of the House of Lords, the members of which were appointed by the Crown for life. To these were given the prerogative of altering or rejecting bills which came up from the lower chamber. The councillorswere men of high social standing including even prelates and judges. Then came the executive; a mimic privy council, composed of men elected by the viceroy to advise with h...