ill was anything but a perfect measure. Its passage had one {133}
more important reaction, the Annexation movement of 1849.

This episode in Canadian history is usually slurred over by our
writers. It is considered to be a national disgrace, a shameful
confession of cowardice, like an attempt at suicide in a man. It did
undoubtedly show want of faith in the future. Those who organized the
movement did 'despair of the republic.' But it is possible to blame
them too much. Annexation to the United States was in the air. Lord
Elgin writes that it was considered to be the remedy for every kind of
Canadian discontent. He was haunted by the fear of it all through his
tenure of office. Annexation had been preached by the Radical journals
for years in Canada; and it was confidently expected by politicians in
the United States. As late as 1866 a bill providing for the admission
of the states of Upper Canada, Nova Scotia, etc., to the Union passed
two readings in the House of Representatives. The Dominion elections
of a quarter of a century later (1891) gave the death-blow to the
notion that Annexation was Canada's manifest destiny; but the idea died
hard.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite. {134} Embittered by
defeat, the very party that had stood like a rock for British
connection now moved definitely for separation. The circular issued by
the Annexation Association of Montreal is a document too seldom
studied, but it repays study. In tone it is the reverse of
inflammatory; it is markedly temperate and reasonable. After a
dispassionate review of the present situation, it considers the
possibilities that lie before the colony--federal union, independence,
or reciprocity with the United States. All that Goldwin Smith was to
say about Canada's manifest destiny is said here. His ideas and
arguments are perfectly familiar to the Annexationists of '49. The
appeal at the close contains this sentence:

Fellow-Colonists, We have thus laid before you our views and
convictions on a momentous question--involving a change which, though
contemplated by many of us with varied feelings and emotions, we all
believe to be inevitable;--one which it is our duty to provide for, and
lawfully to promote.

There were those who protested against Annexation; but they were
denounced as {135} 'known monopolists and protectionists.' One speaker
said: 'Were it necessary I might multiply citation on citation to prove
that