The word “Confederation” is often used in a restrictive sense to refer merely to the “British North America Act”; in this restricted sense, it refers to the constitution of Canada. In its broader sense, it should refer to the union of the entire population of Canada, grouped together, on the one hand into provinces, and on the other hand into Canadians of French and English descent, for the attainment, the development, and the protection of interests common to all, while safeguarding for each group, whether province or race, the rights and traditions peculiar to it. These two understandings of Confederation are indispensable for a better comprehension of the attitude of French Canada towards it.

Two lines of thought as to the understandings, agreements, pacts, or contracts—call them what you like—which were satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily formulated by the British North America Act must be noted. While for the majority of Anglo-Canadian constitutional authors the pacts of 1864, 1865, and 1866 were primarily made between provinces, one of which happened to be populated for the most part by Canadians of French descent, for French-Canadian constitutional writers these pacts were at one and the same time agreements between the four original provinces on the one hand and between the two great races on the other hand. The fact that Sir George Etienne Cartier and other French Fathers of Confederation did not, at the time, foresee that at some future date the provinces of Canada other than Quebec would also be populated by an important number of French Canadians, and that they consequently directed all their efforts for the safeguarding of the rights of French Canadians to securing for the province of Quebec the largest possible amount of independence, does not, in our opinion, change the above views on the matter.