Macdonald Letter to be Auctioned

CBC news reports that a letter John A. Macdonald wrote to the famous English legal theorist Sir Henry Maine shortly after the passage of the British North America Act will be auctioned. In the letter, Macdonald expresses his delight at the passage of BNA Act and some ideas on the possibility of war with the United States.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2006/11/24/macdonald-letter.html

The provenance of this letter has not be made public, but we are told that it is currently in private hands (perhaps those of a distant relative of Maine). It is unclear from the CBC story if any other correspondence between Maine and Macdonald will be put up for auction. It is also unknown whether there is an extant reply from Maine to Macdonald.

I take a particular interest in this story. My PhD thesis was on the role of British businessmen in Canadian Confederation, so any document relating to the Anglo-Canadian relationship in this period is naturally interesting to me. In fact, I'm fascinated by pretty much anything related to Macdonald. Moreover, Maine was an important social theorist in his own right who doubtless had an interesting perspective on Canadian Confederation and the imperial constitution.

Indeed, the role of legal ideas about the imperial constitution in the politics of Confederation would itself be an interesting topic for a book or dissertation (for someone else to write). Although 19th century British colonists generally subscribed to a Dicey-style notion of Parliamentary omnicompetence, many Anti-Confederates in Nova Scotia believed that the sovereignty of the imperial parliament was limited and that Westminster had exceeded these limits when it forced Nova Scotia into Confederation. (Ken Pryke quotes Nova Scotians who thought this way). Joseph Howe disliked this doctrine (not surprising, given that he was the son of the United Empire Loyalist), but he nevertheless raised when he discussed fighting Confederation in court with two London barristers. The barristers, however, told Howe that it was unlikely that a British court would declare the BNA Act to be ultra vires!


Let us hope that the Library and Archives of Canada will be able to purchase this important document. I suspect, however, that this letter will be snapped up by a Bay Street law firm. If so, let's hope they do the right thing and place it on permanent loan with a Canadian archive. It would be nice if this letter were placed in the Macdonald Fonds in Ottawa.