September 25, 1867

MORE FROM ALGOMA

The Globe has published another letter from the Algoma constituency. The riding has been the site of much controversy for the fact that the eligibility of Indian voters was manipulated by the Government to obtain an outcome favourable to Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. The latest letter is reproduced here, with minor edits for length:

SIR, — The election farce is over here…the Government candidates, trusting to the powers of corruption, bribery, and blackest perjury, are chuckling over their success. But what affects us most is the wholesale rejection of the entire Indian vote. Talk of “Star Chambers,” “Aulic Councils,” &c, but the annals of despotism furnish fewer blacker examples of moral and political guilt, or more glaring instances of high-handed villainy and lawless usurpation of executive power, than have been exhibited in this contest. The facts of the case are as follows; let the public judge for themselves: —

Under the Confederation Act, the District of Algoma, embracing the whole country lying along the north shores of Lake Huron and Superior, and forming a coast line of nearly 700 miles, was enfranchised, giving us the power to send one representative to the {unreadable} …ment roll, and consequently, no legal voters. But, by the Imperial Act, we were placed on household suffrage, so that by sections 41 and 84 of that Act, all British subjects of the age of twenty-one or upwards, being householders, are entitled to the vote. These sections are sufficiently comprehensive to embrace Indians, blacks and whites.

The ablest lawyers were agreed that all Indians born in the country since the Province of Québec was ceded to the British Crown, more than a century ago, were and are British subjects; they can be nothing else, and consequently they are entitled to the same franchise as other subjects, and on the same terms. Under universal suffrage they would count the same as other people; under a property qualification, the same amount that would qualify one man would qualify another. If it were put to an educational test, such as the speaking of certain languages, or the rehearsal of certain catechisms, I believe the Indian would hold his own with either blacks or whites; and when the test is the possession of a house, no logic on earth can convince us that an Indian householder is not politically the same as any other householder. This view of the case was so plain that it was accepted by all parties; and all the candidates, whether for or against the Administration, went to work canvassing the Indian votes. All were eloquent in congratulating their brethren on their elevation to that same political status as other men, and all were lavish of their promises to redress their grievances, and do them ample justice. But the “native Americans” turned out to be a shrewder and better informed man than his white brethren supposed. At the different political meetings, the Indians put questions to the candidates that rather astonished them, and feeling their way into the animus, by which the different parties were moved, they selected as the men of their choice, Mr. Allan Macdonnell for the House of Commons and Mr. W.H. Palmer, for the Legislature of Ontario, giving their reasons for their choice. Mr. Simpson, they said, was a Hudson’s Bay Company man, an institution in which they had no faith. Mr. Cumberland they knew nothing about, except that he represented certain railway interests of which they knew nor cared anything; but they distrusted him from the fact that he was associated with a set of local officials, from whom they had received much injustice.

On the other hand, Mr. Macdonnell and Mr. Palmer were men whom they had known for many years — men who had never received any of their money, by had done them many acts of kindness. These men they knew and respected — and trusted. And so, they resolved to act on the maxim that “Union is Strength,” and concentrate their whole suffrage on Macdonnell and Palmer. This, of course, would have given these two gentlemen a large majority in the district. So their opponents, as their last resource, brought the force of some wonderful screws to bear on the returning officer, and on the day of the nomination we were starteled by the announcement from the hustings that the Indian vote would not be accepted. Mr. Sheriff Carney, by this high-handed measure, took upon himself to ignore an Act of the Imperial Parliament — set aside the Queen’s broad seal — disenfranchise a whole district, insult an entire people, and trample on Magna Charta, and the Bill of Rights.

Some people charge this to the present Government; but we are loathe to believe that any Government could be guilty of such an outrage. If the Executive are going to endorse this act of a despotic Returning Officer, and bring us down to such a level of degradation and slavery, it is time we should know it. Let us know the worst of our case, and then we shall look out for a remedy. Our first appeal through the press shall be to the common sense, the common justice, and the common patriotism of the people of Canada. We shall just state the case as it has occurred, and let the public opinion resolve itself into a tangible form.

During the two days continuance of the election farce, we saw white men of the most degraded moral character, the very lowest degree of stupidity and ignorance, and without a dollar worth of tangible property to their name, sworn in as “householders” and voting. We saw the negroes, born nobody knows where (they don’t know themselves), and without a semblance of property, house or anything else, sworn in as voters. And, we saw at the same polling place a fine, manly looking Indian chief, the owner of a good house, with cultivated lands, boats, nets and other valuable property, and bearing on his breast a silver medal won on Queenston Heights, under the intrepid Brock; we saw him subjected to a process of badgering and insult by a pack of pert pettifoggers, and driven off from the polls, because he was an Indian.

This was an individual case, but take a whole community. On the Island of Grand Manitoulin, in Lake Huron, there are not less than 300 Indian householders — not migratory bands, living in wigwams; but farmers, mechanics an fishermen, living in good substantial houses, having amongst them churches of different denominations, school house, and in fact all of the elements of {unreadable} and freedom. At the {unreadable} alone, they have the largest church in the whole district, a fine massive stone edifice, built by themselves, and tastefully finished off, with a smaller chapel connected with the main building, and the best regulated school in Algoma, besides a boarding school or seminary for young girls. At this village alone, there are 83 household voters. These men, by the Queen’s proclamation, and an Act of the Imperial Parliament, are called on to come and record their votes; they come on the day appointed, peacefully and orderly to elect their representatives for the two great Councils of the Dominion. But, on arriving at the polling place, the deputy returning officer shuts the door against them and tells them to go. He will not take their votes because they are Indians. At “Killarney,” at “Little Current,” at ten polling places along our extended frontier, the same ignoble game has been played — the same insult offered to a peaceful and loyal people, who, in moral virtue, industrial habits, and general intelligence, have proved themselves quite equal to the generality of their neighbours, either black or white. The plea set up by the officials, and the question asked at every polling place was: — Do you belong to a band? Do you draw any pay from Government? The Indian says, yes. Then you have no vote. Just look at the logic. The Indians sell their land to the Government for a certain consideration. Our Government, instead of paying off at once, as the American government does, doles out their pay in yearly annuities, arranged in such a way that nine-tenths of the whole sum goes to agents, deputy agents, paymasters, Government doctors and lazy Government missionaries; so that out of every ten dollars really due to the original lord of the soil, he gets one; and thus, because he accepts that one, he is disenfranchised, insulted as a man, and thrown down to the level of a dog; and all this to secure the election of two men who are known to represent certain Railway and Fur Company monopolies, and are ready to do any dirty work that may be cut out for them.

If this is the way we are going to commence our career in the new Dominion, I am afraid that career will be short. If patriotism, truth, and justice are to be set aside, if Acts of Parliament are to be ignored, and the sacred rights of men trampled upon, all to subserve the low designs of a selfish and unprincipled party, we had better ascertain at once the strength of that party, and our own powers to grapple with them. In the meantime, we appeal to public opinion, that great lever that moves the world. Then we shall appeal to our Local Government, in whom we still repose faith. But that failing, we shall appeal to the British Throne, that Throne were centres our pride and our loyalty, and to the British constitution and the British people, in whom we have the fullest confidence.

A MAN OF ALGOMA