highest
ground: "The appointment of that high authority is the only power which
Great Britain still retains. Frankly and generously she has one by one
surrendered all the rights which were once held necessary to the
condition of a colony--the patronage of the Crown, the right over the
public domain, the civil list, the customs, the post office have all
been relinquished ... she guards our coasts, she maintains our troops,
she builds our forts, she spends hundreds of thousands among us yearly;
and yet the paltry payment to her representative is made a topic of
grumbling and popular agitation."[49] In the same spirit he fought
annexation, and killed it, among his followers; and, when confederation
came, he helped to make the new dominion not only Canadian, but
British. In that age when British faith in the Empire was on the wane,
it was not English statesmanship which tried to inspire Canadian
loyalty, but the loyalty of men like Brown which called to England to
be of better heart. "I am much concerned {343} to observe," he wrote
to Macdonald in 1864, "that there is a manifest desire in almost every
quarter that ere long, the British American colonies should shift for
themselves, and in some quarters, evident regret that we did not
declare at once for independence. I am very sorry to observe this, but
it arises, I hope, from the fear of invasion of Canada by the United
States, and will soon pass away with the cause that excites it."[50]

Of Sir John Macdonald's loyalty it would be a work of supererogation to
speak. His first political address proclaimed the need in Canada of a
permanent connection with the mother country,[51] and his most famous
utterance declared his intention of dying a British subject. But
Macdonald's patriotism struck a note all its own, and one due mainly to
the influence of Canadian autonomy working on a susceptible
imagination. He was British, but always from the standpoint of Canada.
He had no desire to exalt the Empire through the diminution of Canadian
rights. For the old British Tory, British supremacy had necessarily
involved colonial dependence; for Macdonald, the Canadian Conservative,
the glory of the Empire lay in the {344} fullest autonomous development
of each part. "The colonies," he said in one of his highest flights,
"are now in a transition stage. Gradually a different colonial system
is being developed--and it will become, year by year, less a case of
dependence on our p