25-03-2025
When Benjamin Franklin failed to make Canada the 14th colony
Madelaine Drohan is a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and author of the forthcoming 'He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin's Failure to Annex Canada.'
Why would Canadians want to join a country whose leaders no longer believe in its founding values?
I recently reread a letter Congress sent to Canadians, inviting them to join the emerging American union. Aside from the veiled threats about what would happen if Canadians did not accept the offer, as well as a couple of digs about their inferior status, it contains some stirring stuff about what Americans stood for and hoped to achieve. I use the past tense because the country's current political leadership does not appear to support these ideals.
For those of you scratching your heads — letter? what letter? — it was written in 1774, when Canadians and Americans were fellow British colonists. (Yes, some Americans have been eyeing Canada for that long.) It was sent to the Province of Quebec by delegates to the First Continental Congress, including Founding Fathers George Washington, John Adams and John Jay. In it, they described in glowing terms the country they sought to build and the values that would serve as its foundation.
They thought — wrongly, as it turned out — that the Canadians of that era, who were overwhelmingly French-speaking and Catholic, could not help but see that it was in their best interests to join a group of English-speaking Protestants in their fight with the British government. (The Declaration of Independence was still on the horizon.)
The letter is worth reading today because the delegates laid out the things they thought made their system of governance so much better than what existed in British-ruled Canada. They also listed the rights French Canadians were entitled to as 'English freemen.' It is unclear whether they had a tin ear or whether they honestly thought French Canadians would want to see themselves as English.
The first of these rights was that Americans should have a share in their own government because they would choose their own representatives, approve their own laws and would not be ruled by 'edicts of men' over whom they had no control. They clearly felt strongly about this point because they made it several different ways, citing the Enlightenment thinkers Beccaria and Montesquieu, and also what they called the histories of many nations. 'All these histories demonstrate the truth of this simple position, that to live by the will of one man, or sett of men, is the production of misery to all men.'
The next of the great rights that the colonists felt Canadians were lacking was trial by jury, which in their minds ensured that those accused of crimes would receive their fair day in court. They then moved on to 'liberty of the person' — explaining that this was protected by a writ called habeas corpus, which would immediately cause any illegal restraints on individuals to be removed and redressed.
Freedom of the press was the last great right the authors of the letter thought Canadians would said it was important because it advanced truth, science, morality and the arts in general, but also because ready communication between subjects meant 'oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs.'
The authors looked to Montesquieu to make what they thought was an important point about the separation of powers. The system in Canada, where the governor made the laws and selected the legislative council and the judges, injured and insulted Canadians, they wrote. 'When the power of making laws, and the power of executing them, are united in the same person, or in the same body of Magistrates, there can be no liberty, because apprehension may arise, lest the same Monarch or Senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.'
Still channeling Montesquieu — who had died nearly 20 years earlier — the authors said he would have undoubtedly told Canadians to seize the opportunity to be 'conquered into liberty.' He would also have told them they were 'a small people, compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship' and that it was in their interest 'to have the rest of North America your unalterable friends' rather than 'your inveterate enemies.'
One last part of the letter is worth mentioning: the section on religion. It was meant to calm any fears the French-speaking Catholics might have had about uniting with the largely English-speaking Protestants in the American colonies, given that religious wars had raged for centuries. If the French Canadians joined the colonies, the authors said soothingly, the result would be like the Swiss Cantons, where Catholic and Protestant believers 'lived in the utmost concord and peace.' This might have had more impact if the delegates had not also approved a letter to the inhabitants of Britain in which Catholicism was described as 'a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.' The French-Canadian clergy made sure that second letter was widely distributed to their flock.
Aside from the protestations of religious peace, the delegates seemed sincere in what they saw as the many attractions of the system of governance they were building. Indeed, it has served the United States well for many years.
But today, President Donald Trump, his Cabinet and his party are dismantling the foundations laid 250 years ago. There are plenty of reasons an overwhelming majority of Canadians tell pollsters they do not want to be Americans. Why would they join a country led by politicians who are trampling on its founding values?
A free press? Trump has attacked and belittled America's media for years. When he called the flow of immigrants into the United States an 'invasion,' he prepared the ground for dismantling the right of habeas corpus. Fair trial by jury? Convicted of 34 felonies, Trump called the verdict 'disgraceful.' The collapse of separation of powers is evident in the lack of pushback from Congress. And Canadians watch with horror as 'one man, or sett of men' — Trump and his coterie — slash and burn their way through federal institutions and mores.
When the French Canadians did not reply to that 1774 invitation, the Continental Congress authorized an invasion the next year. About 1,700 troops in the newly formed continental army swept up Lake Champlain, easily taking Montreal and Trois-Rivières, while about the same number went overland through what is now northern Maine. They met outside the walls of Quebec City, the last remaining British stronghold in Canada.
What Americans portrayed as a war of liberation to free Canadians from British tyranny ended in humiliating disaster. Faulty intelligence had led the Americans to believe the French Canadians would welcome the invasion. Some did. But the majority sat on their hands and watched as American troops failed to take Quebec City in December and then fled for home when British reinforcements arrived by ship in May.
Even the intervention of Benjamin Franklin, who traveled to Montreal in April 1776 to intercede with the French Canadians, did not help. As Jean Chretien, Canada's prime minister from 1993 to 2003, told a cheering Ottawa crowd on March 9, Franklin was politely told 'Non, merci.'
Canadians did not want to become the 14th colony in 1776, and — for what may be even better reasons — they do not want to become the 51st state now.
