Age of Collapsing

I was delighted to learn of the Canadian peregrinations of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in your recent editorial. This put me in mind of the third annual meeting of the BAAS at Cambridge in 1833, during which the new term “scientist” was coined by William Whewell, the mathematician, philosopher of science, and president of the association, while in conversation with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, metaphysician, and jobbing lecturer. Whewell and Coleridge felt that a new term was needed to refer to those specialists — philosophers, thinkers, experimentalists? none of the available labels seemed to fit — who were expert in one or more of the new scientific sub-fields that had emerged in recent times, such as chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.

Whewell was one of the last great intellectual generalists, equally at home discussing Greek hexameters with Coleridge or angular un­conformities with Charles Lyell. While many of us modern academics might look back in envy at Whewell’s breadth of learning and public authority, we would also do well to remember what his contemporary Sidney Smith had to say about his most ambitious public pronouncements: “Science is his forte, omniscience is his foible.”

As to the language of the Jefferson Davis plaque placed on the downtown Montreal Hudson’s Bay store in 1957, readers might also want to pick up Claire Hoy’s Canadians in the Civil War, from 2004.

According to Hoy, the bronze plaque was initially written in English and was replaced with a French version in the 1970s. At the time, it amused me to think of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the sponsors, dutifully following Quebec’s new language rules. Hoy points out that the plaque had been aimed originally at American tourists, few of whom were able to read the new version, which was ultimately removed in 2017.

In his thoughtful review of Julian Sher’s The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots against Lincoln, David Marks Shribman cites a passage (presumably from Sher’s book) that has Macdonald praising “the gallant defence that is being made by the Southern Republic” at the Charlottetown Conference in 1864. Both gentlemen imply that Macdonald supported the Confederates and their objectives.

There is no evidence that Macdonald supported the secessionists, and he did not consider the United States of America a failure. “On the contrary I consider it a marvelous exhibition of human wisdom,” he said, but he vowed to avoid its mistakes. Instead of the American model, Macdonald called for a “strong central government” that would hold the rights of sovereignty except in matters specifically awarded to the provinces.

Macdonald was being political, doing what he had to do to build what could only be a fragile coalition of pro-Confederation supporters. Many people in Nova Scotia — so loyal to Britain — supported the South, and Macdonald sought their support by noting, in passing, the soldiers of the Confederacy. He also needed the support of the vast majority of Canadians who were repelled by the acts of the rebelling states (some of whom chose to fight for the North). Those were the people he agreed with.

Cursed is the man who is misquoted; damned is he who is only half quoted.