was just forty in 1864, Whelan had been in Island politics since 1846 and he had never lost an election. In 1864, he was in opposition, but he had been a cabinet minister during most of the 1850s.
A perceptive political tactician, Whelan understood why he had been invited to join the delegation going to Quebec. As an opposition member who favoured union, he was doubly useful to provincial secretary (and confederation advocate) William Henry Pope, usually his bitter foe, who seems to have secured his appointment, along with that of an establishment tory, Heath Haviland. Whelan and Haviland would become Pope’s strongest pro-confederation allies among the increasingly sceptical delegates from the Island.
Whelan was the only confederation delegate to note the political calculation behind the recruiting of opposition members to the conferences. “Politicians are generally cunning fellows, and those in the several Maritime governments showed this quality to great advantage when they appointed members of the opposition,” he told a Montreal banquet in October, “because if the people of the several provinces should be so unwise as to complain, … the opposition would have to bear the censure as well as those in the administration.” 2
Whelan, so clear-eyed about why he had been invited, was none the less happy to participate. No apolitical ambassador, he sawhimself “representing the opinions of the liberal party” at the conference, and he had his own political agenda to pursue. Whelan had endorsed confederation mostly for its promise to bring the changes he wanted for the Island, and he wanted his views on this confederation heard, whatever the political risk. He boarded the
Queen Victoria
in high enthusiasm. From shipboard he sent back a promise to his readers to report on “the ancient and historic city” and its “mazy, crooked, narrow, and bewildering streets,” as well as “the great question of inter-colonial union.” He had never been to Quebec – or any part of the united Canadas – before. 3
Whelan had a magpie curiosity about people and places, but he was also temperamentally inclined to argue all his political stances back to principles. This makes him doubly curious, for historians have been at pains to insist that the makers of confederation were plain-speaking pragmatists, not philosophers. It was a point of pride, almost, for the historians of the 1960s to declare that the makers of confederation, as Donald Creighton put it in his forthright way, “saw no merit in setting out on a highly unreal voyage of discovery for first principles.” In the pragmatic, end-of-ideology 1950s and early 1960s, historians preferred to see the constitution-makers as politicians to their fingertips, manoeuvring their way with one eye on the voters and the other on Westminster toward any deal that seemed possible. 4
Since then, Creighton’s praise has often been turned into a rebuke to the delegates, used to characterize them – and their confederation – as unintellectual, reactionary, and incapable of assimilating big ideas. Professor Russell backhands the Canadian constitution as “a practical, though not philosophical accord.” Writer George Woodcock, less restrained, sneers at it as “a makeshift document cobbled together by colonial politicians.” 5
If historians and political scientists do challenge this aphilosophical view of confederation, they do so by invoking the name of Edmund Burke. This is no compliment. In the twentieth century, Burke has become perhaps the most spectacularly out-of-fashionpolitical philosopher in the canon. Few who point to Burke’s influences on the makers of confederation mean to honour them by the identification.
Edward Whelan would not admit being a disciple of Edmund Burke. An Irish Catholic immigrant with more than a little sympathy for Irish nationalism and Irish rebels, he preferred as his role model Henry Grattan, who, as the founder of a short-lived Irish
A perceptive political tactician, Whelan understood why he had been invited to join the delegation going to Quebec. As an opposition member who favoured union, he was doubly useful to provincial secretary (and confederation advocate) William Henry Pope, usually his bitter foe, who seems to have secured his appointment, along with that of an establishment tory, Heath Haviland. Whelan and Haviland would become Pope’s strongest pro-confederation allies among the increasingly sceptical delegates from the Island.
Whelan was the only confederation delegate to note the political calculation behind the recruiting of opposition members to the conferences. “Politicians are generally cunning fellows, and those in the several Maritime governments showed this quality to great advantage when they appointed members of the opposition,” he told a Montreal banquet in October, “because if the people of the several provinces should be so unwise as to complain, … the opposition would have to bear the censure as well as those in the administration.” 2
Whelan, so clear-eyed about why he had been invited, was none the less happy to participate. No apolitical ambassador, he sawhimself “representing the opinions of the liberal party” at the conference, and he had his own political agenda to pursue. Whelan had endorsed confederation mostly for its promise to bring the changes he wanted for the Island, and he wanted his views on this confederation heard, whatever the political risk. He boarded the
Queen Victoria
in high enthusiasm. From shipboard he sent back a promise to his readers to report on “the ancient and historic city” and its “mazy, crooked, narrow, and bewildering streets,” as well as “the great question of inter-colonial union.” He had never been to Quebec – or any part of the united Canadas – before. 3
Whelan had a magpie curiosity about people and places, but he was also temperamentally inclined to argue all his political stances back to principles. This makes him doubly curious, for historians have been at pains to insist that the makers of confederation were plain-speaking pragmatists, not philosophers. It was a point of pride, almost, for the historians of the 1960s to declare that the makers of confederation, as Donald Creighton put it in his forthright way, “saw no merit in setting out on a highly unreal voyage of discovery for first principles.” In the pragmatic, end-of-ideology 1950s and early 1960s, historians preferred to see the constitution-makers as politicians to their fingertips, manoeuvring their way with one eye on the voters and the other on Westminster toward any deal that seemed possible. 4
Since then, Creighton’s praise has often been turned into a rebuke to the delegates, used to characterize them – and their confederation – as unintellectual, reactionary, and incapable of assimilating big ideas. Professor Russell backhands the Canadian constitution as “a practical, though not philosophical accord.” Writer George Woodcock, less restrained, sneers at it as “a makeshift document cobbled together by colonial politicians.” 5
If historians and political scientists do challenge this aphilosophical view of confederation, they do so by invoking the name of Edmund Burke. This is no compliment. In the twentieth century, Burke has become perhaps the most spectacularly out-of-fashionpolitical philosopher in the canon. Few who point to Burke’s influences on the makers of confederation mean to honour them by the identification.
Edward Whelan would not admit being a disciple of Edmund Burke. An Irish Catholic immigrant with more than a little sympathy for Irish nationalism and Irish rebels, he preferred as his role model Henry Grattan, who, as the founder of a short-lived Irish
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