[BURPEE] HOWE AND THE ANTI-CONFEDERATION LEAGUE 457 
or the other with a chance that the plan of delay might be entertained, or that the 
peculiar state of parties might postpone the measure till after a dissolution. On all 
points circumstances which seemed favorable turned out otherwise. The question 
of the franchise, by repeated postponements, was got out of the way, and the Cabinet, 
having nothing else ready, were glad to make a show of doing something, by taking 
down the Confederation Bill and rushing it through both Houses. By taking the 
ground that it was a treaty and not to be amended or disturbed, all discussion of the 
thing as a Scheme of government was discountenanced, and being forced on almost 
before Members had had time to examine the papers, but few except those who were 
interested in its passage understood the question. The general, indeed the almost 
universal feeling appeared to be that uniting the Provinces was an easy mode of getting 
rid of them, and the wish, expressed by the Times, ‘‘that independence would speedily 
follow Confederation,” was scarcely disguised by any body. All this is very sad, and 
will occasion a disruption of old ties and a revulsion of old feelings painful to contem- 
plate. 
The high duties of Canada and the failure of the Militia Bill'# a few years ago 
created in this country distrust and dislike, pretty general in the Manufacturing 
towns, and with a portion of the Press, but this had scarcely reached the governing 
classes to the extent that a separation from North America was desired. On the 
return of the Guards from Canada the higher classes appear to have been convinced 
that the Canadian frontier was indefensible!’—that service there would be perillous 
ending in discomfiture and disgrace, and that this country, which can hardly raise 
troops enough to defend these Islands could never spare soldiers enough to keep in 
check the enormous armies that the United States could throw across the border 
if so inclined. This conviction, not openly avowed in all cases, underlay the action 
of all parties in both Houses on this Bill. 
Lord Normanby told us to our faces that we might declare our independence or 
join the United States whenever we chose, and not a Peer contradicted him. In the 
Lower House Mr. Watkin was the only member who spoke with any warmth of a 
continuance of the connection and he was heard with chilling indifference. Indeed 
the impression left on my mind by all that took place in both Houses, is that the 
Provinces are a source of peril and expense, and that the sooner the responsibility 
of their relations with the Republic is shifted off the shoulders of John Bull the better.” 


124 The Militia Bill of 1862, introduced by John A. Macdonald. It embodied the recommendations 
of a special commission appointed to report on the reorganization of the Militia, and provided an active 
force of 56,000 men and a reserve of the same strength, at an annual cost of something over a million 
dollars. The Bill was defeated by the defection of a number of the Lower Canadian members, and the 
government resigned. Pope, Memoirs, I, 236-37. This action of the Canadian Legislature was made 
the subject of severe comment by many of the leading English newspapers, in which it was very frankly 
stated that Canada should relieve the Mother Country of at least some of the burden of Canadian de- 
fence. Lewis, Brown, 147. 
1% There had been long and serious debates in the House of Lords, Feb. 20, 1865, and in the House 
of Commons, March 13, 1865, on the subject of Canadian defence, based on the report of Colonel Jer- 
vois. Lewis, Brown, 183-85. 
126 This was the day of the Little Englanders, and they had the field pretty much to themselves. 
What Sir Charles Dilke wrote in 1868 was what most Englishmen were thinking at that time. ‘‘At 
bottom,”’ he says, ‘‘It would seem as though no-one gained by the retention of our hold on Canada. 
Were she independent her borders would never again be wasted by Fenian hordes, and she would escape 
the terrible danger of being the battlefield in which European quarrels are fought out. Canada once 
republican the Monroe Doctrine would be satisfied and its most violent partisans would cease to advo- 
cate the adoption of other than moral means to merge her territories in the Union. An independent 
Canada would not long delay the railway across the continent to Puget Sound which a British bureau 
calls impossible. England would be relieved from the fear of a certain defeat by America in the 
event of war—a fear always harmful even when war seems most unlikely; relief too from the cause of 
such panics as those of 1861 and 1866.” Greater Britain, 66-67. 
