The Course of Canadian Democracy

THE COURSE OF CANADIAN DEMOCRACY D. G. CREIGHTON I JT IS difficult, if not impossible; to begin a discussion of Canadian democracy with a really appropriate quotation from the works of a Canadian democratic philosopher. This odd fact itself is not without a good deal of significance. In the United States such an opening would not merely be advisable, it would practically be required. The United States has the great good fortune to possess, in the persons of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, two philosophers who set forth the fundamental bases of American democracy in extremely cogent and attractive form. The Americans have gone on paying suitable homage to these two great men ever since. They have erected monuments to the memory of Thomas Jefferson and they have followed the practical advice of Alexander Hamilton; and they are likely to continue this fine, impartiaf veneration for the mighty dea,d into an indefinite future. But in Canada we have no philosophers whose words can be honoured either by quotation or by observance. When we desire an epigram or a fine inspirationa,l passage, we are forced to go to English or American sources. We quote Lincoln or Milton or Jefferson or Burke. We even, oddly enough, quote Junius, as the Toronto Globe and Mail does at ,its masthead. But we have no really quotable theorists of our own. Perhaps the most promising candidate is William Lyon . Mackenzie, who devised a rather interesting combination of Jeffersonian democracy arid Benthamism . But Mackenzie, unfortunately for his reputation, became involved in an abortive rebellion. His ideas have never been completely rescued from the discredit into which they were suddenly plunged; and it is difficult for a political philosopher to survive the continued neglect of the best people of his own country. This complete absence of native speculation on the nature of political democracy inay be simply one more example of our national inarticulateness. This dumb, patient, ox-like silence of ours on all political and social topics of general interest, including every aspect of our own affairs, has almost risen to the level of a sacred national tradition. Extremely few of us have dared to 255 256 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY deviate from this frightened taciturnity and we have shown great inhospitality, and even marked hostility, to those who do. We should probably, therefore, have had little enough to say about our democratic institutions, even if we had created them de novo, in a great burst of original genius. But we have, of course, the very best of reasons for concluding that everything of value has already been said about them; for the fact is that we have created virtually none of them ourselves. It could he argued that we have borrowed all our political ideas, institutions and practices; but it would probably be more accurate, and it would certainly be more consoling, to say that we have inherited them. The inheritance, of course, comes chiefly from England. It happens to be a remarkably good, and justly celebrated, inheritance. Naturally we were so impressed with it that we did not presume to make changes. And we acquired the legacy of English democracy in a remarkably pure and unaltered form. On -the whole we established our right to this English inheritance with astonishing ease and astonishingly early. By the end of the eighteenth century, all the British North American provinces that survived the American Revolution had been granted representative institutions. These institutions, according to the often quoted remark of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, combined to produce a perfect image or transcript of the British constitution . This observation of Simcoe's is usually quoted against him by Canadian historians with the obvious intent of proving subsequently how incorrect his estimat_ e was; but it has always seemed to me that, in all essentials, Simcoe was completely right. The British statute of 1791, to which of course he referred, gave to the two Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada a popularly elected legislative assembly, an appointed legislative council and an appointed executive council. Evidently we have liked these institutions. We have, in fact1 been devoted to them. We have altered them extraordinarily little, and, as...