Montreal Annexation Manifesto
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The Montreal Annexation Manifesto was a political document, published in 1849 in Montreal, Quebec, calling for Canada's annexation by the United States.
The Manifesto was published by the Annexation Association, an alliance of Montreal businessmen, who were opposed to Britain's abolition of the Corn Laws, thus ending preferential colonial trade, and by its consent to the Rebellion Losses Bill, and French Canadian radical nationalists (including Louis-Joseph Papineau) who supported the republican system of government in the United States. These businessmen recognized that so long as the Provinces of Canada were under British rule, it would be subjected to the interests of the British aristocratic business elite. Papineau too had seen the same domination by an elite in France and given the tiny population in Canada vis-à-vis that of the United States, these people understood that the abolition of customs duties at such an early point in Canada's economic development would be disastrous for Canadian business and the job losses would be massive.
The Manifesto was strongly opposed by members of the British American League and by leading politicians such as Robert Baldwin plus the followers of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine. After the signing of the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty in 1854, the Annexation movement died out.
In an editorial, the New York Herald newspaper responded to the Annexation Movement with the following advice: "The first thing for the people of Canada to do, however, is to obtain England's consent to dispose of themselves as they think proper."
[edit] References
- Jacques Monet. "Annexation Association", in The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2008
