by Gerald Therrien.
Part 7 – the Aftermath
In the United States, in January 1850, Senator Stephen Douglas tried to introduce a new a bill for reciprocity between Canada and the United States, but the bill could not get passed in the Senate, as the fight over slave state versus free state again erupted, due to Senator Henry Clay (in that same month) introducing a package of bills that aimed to admit California into the Union (as a free state), to set the border of Texas (by having Texas cede some of its claimed territories in the Mexican Cession) and to establish the two Territories of New Mexico and of Utah. The package also included banning the importation of slaves into the capital District of Columbia and a fugitive slave law. President Taylor however opposed the package and instead favored admitting both California and New Mexico into the Union as free states. Clay’s package could not get passed in the Senate.
Under strange circumstances, President Taylor suddenly died on July 9th. With an ailing Clay (suffering from tuberculosis that would kill him in June 1852) who would leave the Senate to try to recuperate, Douglas would now try to get Clay’s bills passed through the Senate, with the support of the new president (the former Vice President Millard Fillmore). The passage of these bills became known as the Compromise of 1850.
After the next American elections in 1852, the new president, Franklin Pierce, would negotiate with Great Britain a reciprocity treaty for Canada and the United States in 1854.
After negotiating the reciprocity treaty, Governor Elgin left Canada, and was reappointed to be the British High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary to China, where during the Second Opium War, he ordered the destruction of the Summer Palace (including its collection of priceless artworks and historical antiquities). [British liberalism on display again!]
In Canada West [Ontario], Robert Baldwin would resign from the government in 1851, and by 1855, George Brown, of the Globe newspaper, would buy up the Clear Grit newspapers (the Examiner and the North American), would hire William MacDougal, and prest-o change-o, Brown was now head of the Grits, would take over control of the Reform party and the liberal Brown would go on to work with conservative John A. Macdonald in the scheme for confederation.
Shortly after Baldwin’s departure, in Canada East [Quebec] Louis LaFontaine would also resign from the government, to be replaced by George Cartier as leader of the reform party, that would soon be called the conservative ‘Parti Bleu’ – in opposition to the ‘Parti Rouge’, and Cartier would later work with Brown and Macdonald in the confederation scheme.
Papineau would retire in 1854, leaving the fight against the British Empire to his young followers from l’Institut Canadien in the ‘Parti Rouge’ – who would win 19 seats in the 1854 election. The ‘Parti Rouge’ would be attacked by the British allied liberals and conservatives, and the l’Institut Canadien would come under attack from the Catholic Church.
At the time when l’Institut Canadien was founded in 1844, there weren’t any French-language universities or public libraries in Canada East [Quebec], and by the time that l’Institut Canadien was incorporated in 1853, it had over 500 members and over 2000 books, with a reading room and where lectures were held. Then in 1858, the ultramontanist Catholic Church under Bishop Bourget, claimed that their library contained books on the Index of Forbidden Books (such as books by Voltaire, Diderot and d’Alembert) and that anyone who read or kept these books would be excommunicated, and that no Catholic could belong to the l’Institut, and that caused l’Institut to eventually close its doors.
The ‘Parti Rouge’ would be the only party that would oppose the British scheme for confederation in Canada, that like in the United Kingdom would be without a constitution, and that could be properly termed a ‘monarchical parliamentary system’.
Epilogue: Henry Carey and the Annexation of Canada
While Papineau and his young followers at L’Institut Canadien and L’Avenir were correct in their desire for a more democratic and republican government for Canada, and for Canada’s annexation to the United States, their Achilles heel (their fatal flaw) was their lack of an understanding of the American System of Economics.
During this maelstrom of free trade, tariffs, confederation or annexation, there emerged a voice of reason. In the December 1849 issue of the American monthly journal, ‘The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil’, a series of letters was published called ‘The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial’, that was written by Henry C. Carey, and the letters were soon expanded and incorporated into a book of the same name, that laid out the advantages and superiority of the American protective system over the British free-trade system.
Carey’s defence of American protectionism against British free-trade would favourably allow for the annexation of Canada into the Union, as it would bring Canada into that protective American system; while at the same time, Carey’s opposition to reciprocity with Canada would not allow the British free-trade system to enter in the back door – through Canada.
The following is excerpted from ‘The Harmony of Interests’, by Henry C. Carey.
– from ‘Chapter Fifth, Why Is It That Protection Is Required’:
“Lord Sydenham, in a letter to Lord John Russell, which accompanied his Report on Emigration to Upper Canada, observed:
‘Give me yeomen, with a few hundred pounds each, who will buy cleared farms, not throw themselves into the bush, and I will ensure them comforts and independence at the end of a couple years – pigs, pork, flour, potatoes, horses to ride, cows to milk – but you must eat all your produce, for devil a purchaser is to be found: however, the man’s wants are supplied, and those of his family; he has no rent or taxes to pay, and he ought to be satisfied.’
Here is the cause of the desire for annexation that now exists throughout Canada. There are no consumers at hand, and the farmer cannot exchange his corn for cloth or iron, the consequence of which is, that labour and land are almost valueless. So it is everywhere. Every Colony therefore desires to separate itself from England, and all would gladly unite with these United States, and for no other reason than that they might have protection.”
– from ‘Chapter Tenth, How Protection Affects the Farmer’:
“Let us next examine the working of the system in Canada, in which there being, almost literally, no manufactures of any kind, there is no market on the land for the products of the land.
Freedom of trade is, there, perfect: that is to say, the people of Great Britain enjoy a complete monopoly of the machinery by aid of which alone the lumber and food of the people of Canada can be converted into cloth and iron. The consequence is, that the labour-cost of manufactured articles is so great that the consumption of them is small. The whole export of cotton cloth from Great Britain to her North American possessions, in the seven years 1840-46, averaged twenty millions of yards, fine and coarse, and if the whole were there consumed, it would give but ten yards per head, or about two and a half pounds of cotton to each individual; whereas the consumption of the Union averages thirteen pounds per head, and is far more than that in the States nearest to Canada. If, now, we desire to know why it is that consumption is less on the one side of the line than on the other, the reason may be found in the fact, that the Canadian gives much more labour for his cloth and his iron than the American. Even his wheat is less in price; and if so, how must it be with those bulky commodities that will not bear transportation? He must, in the words of Sir Francis Head, ‘eat all he raises’, for he has not made, nor can he make a market on the land for the products of the land.
To the Canadian it is perfectly obvious that the price of food with us is maintained by the demand for home consumption, and therefore it is that there exists so universal a desire for the abolition of all restriction in the importation of their productions into the Union. They have perfect freedom of trade with ‘the great grain market of the world’, and by it they are ruined. They desire intercourse with the great grain-producers of the world, and to obtain it they would gladly sacrifice their intercourse with England, taking production in lieu of free trade, and becoming members of the Union.
Were Canada within the Union, her consumption of cotton cloth would rise to a level with our own, for she would at once commence to make iron and cloth at home, producing thereby a demand for labour that is now being wasted. Instead of being a customer to the planter to the extent of two and a half pounds per head, every Canadian would take a dozen pounds; and thus would fifteen millions of pounds be added to the consumption, to the infinite advantage of the planter. The farmer of Illinois might then safely admit free trade with his Canadian neighbours, because with increased home consumption they would experience less necessity for going abroad to find that market for their products which the colonial system now denies to them at home. The farmer who believes in the advantage of free trade with England, should give his vote for the admission of Canadian wheat, raised by men who consume cloth and iron made by men who eat the wheat of Poland and Russia. The farmer who sees that the price of wheat is maintained by the home demand, will be cautious of the admission of foreign wheat, duty free, until, by means of annexation, the farmer of Canada shall obtain the same protection that he himself enjoys, and thereby be enabled to make a market on the land for the products of the land.”
– from ‘Chapter Twenty-Second, How Protection Affects Intellectual Condition’:
“The English school of political economy treats man as a mere machine, placed on the earth for the purpose of producing food, cloth, iron, pins, or needles, and takes no account of him as a being capable of intellectual and moral improvement. It looks for physical power in connection with ignorance and immorality, and the result is disappointment. The workman of this country is infinitely the superior of the workman of Manchester, and the reason is, that he is not treated as a mere machine. The object of what is called free trade is to degrade the one to the level of the other. The object of protection is that of enabling the poor artisan of Manchester or Leeds, Birmingham or Sheffield, to transfer himself to a country in which he will not be so treated, and in which he may have books and newspapers, and his children may be educated.
The colonial system involves an expenditure for ships of war, soldiers, and sailors, greater than would be required for giving to every child in the kingdom an education of the highest order; and those ships and men are supported out of the proceeds of taxes paid by poor mechanics and agricultural labourers, whose children grow up destitute even of the knowledge that there is a God. The object of protection is to do away with the necessity for such ships and men, and to raise the value of labour to such a point as will enable the people of England to provide schools for themselves.
In the colonies, the perpetual exhaustion of the land and its owner has forbidden, as it now forbids, the idea of intellectual improvement …
In Upper Canada, in 1848, the number of children, male and female, under fourteen years of age, was 326,050, of whom 80,461 attended school. So far the state of things is better than in other colonies; but when we come to look further, the difference is not very great. The intellect of man is to be quickened by communion with his fellow-man, of which there can be but little where the loom is widely distant from the plough, and men are distant from each other, all engaged in the single pursuit of agriculture. How slow has been the growth of concentration in that province, may be seem from the following facts. Numerous small woollen mills furnish 584,008 yards of flannel and other inferior cloths, working up the produce of perhaps 250,000 sheep. Fulling mills exist, at which about 2,000,000 pounds of woollen cloths of household manufacture are fulled. Further, there are –
1 rope-walk. 11 pail factories. 1 ship-yard. 1 vinegar factory.
1 candle factory. 1 last factory. 1 trip hammer. 5 chair factories.
1 cement factory. 4 oil mills. 2 paper mills, making 1900 reams each.
2 brick-yards. 1 saleratus factory. 3 tobacco factories.
1 axe factory, producing 5000 per annum. 8 soap factories.
2 steam-engine factories. 3 potteries. 3 nail factories.
1 comb factory. 6 plaster mills.
And these constitute the whole of the manufacturing establishments of that great district of country, much of it so long settled. There is, consequently, little or no employment for mind, and the consequence is, that all who desire to engage in other pursuits than those of agriculture fly to the South. There are now within the Union, not less than 200,000 Canadians, and with every day the tendency to emigration increases. If we look to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, it is the same. There is there no demand for intellect, and any man possessing it flies southward.
Forty years since it was asked, ‘Who reads an American book?’ That question has long since been answered; but it may now be repeated in reference to all the British provinces. Who reads a Canadian, a Nova-Scotian, or a New Brunswick book? Upper Canada has two paper-mills capable of producing about ten reams of paper per day, being, perhaps a tenth of what is required to supply the newspapers of Cincinnati.
Forty years since, the question might be asked, ‘Who uses an American machine?’ and yet the machine shops of Austria and Russia are now directed by our countrymen, and the latest improvements in machinery for the conversion of wool into cloth are of American invention. The British provinces have had the advantage of perfect free trade with England, the consequence of which is, that they are almost destitute of paper-mills and printing-offices, and machine shops are unknown, while the Union has been a prey to the protective system, that ‘war upon labour and capital’, the consequence of which is, that paper-mills and printing-offices abound to such an extent unknown in the world, and almost equal in number and power to those of the whole world, and machine shops exist almost everywhere.
These differences are not due to any difference in the abundance or quality of land, for that of Upper Canada is yet to a great extent unoccupied, and is in quality inferior to none on the continent. They are not due to difference in the other natural advantages, for New Brunswick has every advantage possessed by Maine and New Hampshire. And Nova Scotia has coal and iron ore more advantageously situated than any in the Union. They are not due to difference of taxation, for Great Britain has paid almost all the expenses of government. To what, then, can they be attributed, but to the fact that those provinces have been subject to the monopoly system, and compelled to waste their own labour while giving their products in exchange for the services of English men, women, and children, employed in doing for them what they could have better done themselves, and losing four-fifths of their products in the transit between the producer and the consumer? Place the colony within the Union – give it protection – and in a dozen years its paper-mills and its printing-offices will become numerous, and many will then read Canadian books.”
After reading those excerpts above, it would behoove all Canadian patriots, therefore, to study and learn the lessons in this book, especially, Carey’s support for annexation, but more importantly, his reasoning for the need of a protective system for Canada.
One Canadian, Isaac Buchanan, did study Carey’s book, and did make an attempt to solve the dilemma for Canada, of annexation versus reciprocity, by proposing a North American Zollverein – to fight British free-trade.
And in the future, if an Institut Canadien were to be re-constituted, one of the first orders of business should be to become masters of the ‘Harmony of Interests’.
“O Canada, terre de nos aieux …
Ennemi de la Tyrranie,
Mais plein de loyauté,
Il veut garder dans l’harmonie
Sa fière liberté.
Et par l’effort de son génie,
Sur notre Sol asseoir la vérité!”