Section II, 1917 [99] Trans R.S.C. 



Gait and the 1858 Draft of the Canadian Constitution. 



By O. D. Skelton, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1917.) 



The student of the constitution which was framed for Canada 

 half a century ago is constantly surprised to note how little attention 

 was given to the question of constitutional provisions before the 

 Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences were held. The great bulk 

 of the pamphlet literature and parliamentary discussion dealt with 

 the end, not the means. The writers and speakers of the day were 

 more concerned, and from one standpoint quite rightly so, to picture 

 the greatness and variety of the resources of the future federation 

 than to condescend to the dry details of constitution making. There 

 were exceptions, it is true, from Uniacke to Sherwood and Hamilton 

 and Taché, but it is broadly true that there was little discussion in 

 advance of the political framework which must be set up if the federat- 

 ion of which so many dreamed was to become a reality. 



It is significant, further, to note how in the conferences at Char- 

 lottetown, Quebec and London, where the constitution was eventually 

 fashioned, there was little of the attempt to get back to first principles, 

 little of the broad, philosophic discussion, which had marked the 

 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia seventy-five years earlier. 

 The discussion of the Fathers of our Confederation, like the act in 

 which its results were embodied, appears to have been severely practi- 

 cal, almost meagre at times. The men who took part were all practical, 

 active politicians; they were not going back to first principles because 

 they were not starting with a clean sheet, but were working within 

 limits prescribed by their acceptance of the British political system, 

 their observation of the United States federal government, and their 

 own experience as operators of the provincial machinery. The know- 

 ledge, too, that their conclusions were all to be embodied in an Act 

 of the British Parliament curbed any tendency to rhetoric. 



Of the men who took part in the Conferences, there was no one 

 so given to broad general views, as A. T. Gait. The very qualities 

 which made him less fitted than Macdonald or Cartier or Tupper to 

 lead a political party, made him better fitted to take up a general 

 policy or idea before it had ripened, regardless of its immediate 

 political expediency. The part he took in bringing about Confederat- 

 ion is familiar. He was the first to bring the question within the 



