1 Smiley, Donald V., Canada in Question (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1976), 217–20Google Scholar.

2 In proceeding as I have here I do not deny that a strong if difficult case against separatism might be devised at the level of legal and political obligation on the basis of the existing claims and obligations of Canadian citizens already mentioned. For the statement of such an argument justifying the use of force against the dismemberment of a federal union see Abraham Lincoln, “Message to Congress in Special Session (July 4,1861).” It must be noted, however, that Lincoln goes beyond the general case against “secession” to argue that what would result from this division is worse than what preceded it both for those rebelling and those resisting that rebellion. Indeed, he argues that the preservation of the Union is in the interest of mankind.

3 Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), 123Google Scholar.

4 Republic 414B–415D.

5 Hobbes, Leviathan 1.13; De Cive I.I. See Also Hobbes's defence of Thucydides in the introduction to his translation of The Peloponnesian Wars (English Works, VIII).

6 See especially De Cive 1.3.13.

7 Thus Rousseau's remark that he would choose for his birthplace “a happy and tranquil Republic, whose antiquity was in a way lost in the darkness of time …” in the “Dedication” of the Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (Masters' translation).

8 Grant, George, “In Defence of North America,” in Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), 17Google Scholar.

9 In the Federalist Papers Jay alone argues that there is a basis for Union in a oneness of the Americans as “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion … similar in their manners and customs” and sharing one connected and fertile land as a blessing of Providence (No. 2, pars. 4,5). Hamilton and Madison assume the existence of Union or argue for it as a great experiment that will decide “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force” (No. 1, par. 1). Again in 1861 Lincoln spoke of the Northern cause as a struggle for “maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men …” (“Message to Congress in Special Session [July 4, 1861]”).

10 As William Christian has remarked, it would be a mistake to equate the justification for Canada's continued existence with the theoretical understanding of this matter held by one political leader or by all of our political leaders, for that matter. That there may be a justification for our continued existence as a political unit apart from the prime minister's views does not, however, obviate the necessity for a rigorous scrutiny of those views. Such scrutiny may be imperative especially because there is little or no serious theoretical dissent from those views by English-speaking Canadians.

11 Trudeau, P. E., Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), 4Google Scholar.

12 The definition of nationalism here is taken in modified form from Cohler, Anne, Rousseau and Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 4Google Scholar. Although Trudeau has on occasion distinguished the nation-state from the national state, there treating the former as the unit that replaced the territorial state, he has not generally preserved this usage, however, and even in introducing it pointed out that the transition from nation-state to national state was a small and inevitable step (Federalism, 185). Anticipating the analysis that follows one could say that the multi-national state is another kind of nation-state, but we shall argue this too is importantly a “national state.”

13 Trudeau, Federalism, 157–58.

14 Ibid., 22, 168–70.

15 Ibid., 160.

16 Ibid., 188.

17 Ibid., 178.

18 Ibid., 179.

19 Ibid. Trudeau quotes with approval Lord Acton's comment that the “combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilized life as the combination of men in society …”.

20 Cohler makes the point against Acton and other foes of nationalism that they continue to assume “nations [are] the only conceivable grounds for membership in a political order … that nations have politics rather than that nations are formed by politics” (Rousseau, 7–11). Thus the remark of Acton admired by Trudeau, as also by Elie Kedourie, that a “state which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself continues to assume with the “nationalists” that the satisfaction of races is at least a necessary part of the purpose of politics. See Kedourie's, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson, 1960), 133Google Scholar.

21 Trudeau, Federalism, 195.

22 Ibid., 194.

23 Ibid., 196.

24 Speaking in favour of the adoption of a constitutional Bill of Rights as minister of justice in 1967, Trudeau said: “Essentially, we will be testing—and hopefully establishing—the unity of Canada” (emphasis mine) (“A Constitutional Declaration of Rights,” Federalism, 54). The significance of this proposal for Trudeau would be difficult to exaggerate. Arguing for the priority of this question to that of agreement upon an amending formula Trudeau said we would thus be proceeding by agreement upon “the substance” rather than the “mechanism.” The continuing importance of this proposal is indicated by his reliance upon the same suggestion in his correspondence with Premier Lévesque. See “Trudeau: ‘Reconsider Your Position,’” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Friday, October 7, 1977, 7Google Scholar.

25 The situation thereby created would seem to correspond to that condemned by Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers where policies could only be executed to the extent that the states furnished positive cooperation. See Federalist Papers, Number 16.

26 Trudeau, Federalism, 178.

27 Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government (New York: Dutton, 1951), 486. Kedourie points out that Mill's support of the principle of self-determination for nationalities follows from the Whig view that “the question of government ought to be decided by the governed” and therefore is to be distinguished from the position of Fichte or Schleiermacher, but this is precisely my point here: the preference of Acton and Trudeau for a state including more than one nationality and that of Mill (or Lord Durham) for a state coinciding with one nation are variants of a liberalism which cannot question the decisive significance of national sentiment as an expression of popular will. See Kedourie, Nationalism, 131–33Google Scholar.

28 I would not wish to deny the theoretical or practical importance of the revisions in Hobbesian political science authored by Locke or, perhaps, the wider acceptance of Locke's more cautious and attractive teaching. I am not convinced, however, that a consideration of Locke's contribution would greatly alter the terms of the issue here examined. Concerning the difficulty of developing a coherent critique of the nationalist principle within a liberal position that attaches fundamental priority to consent, it may be noted that a “first and fundamental natural Law [relevant to civil society] is the preservation of the Society, and (as far as will consist with the publick good) of every person in it” (Locke's emphasis) (Second Treatise, chap. 11, sec. 134).

29 Leviathan, “Introduction,” and 2.17, Elements of Law 1.12.8.

30 De Cive 2.6.1, Leviathan 1.16, 107.

31 Leviathan 1.15, 103; 2.30, 221.

32 Leviathan 2.21, 143.

33 Hobbes, Leviathan 2.21, 143. Generally, on the inability of liberalism to require difficult and dangerous acts in behalf of justice, see Grant, George, English-speaking Justice (Sackville: Mount Allison University, 1974), 65–66Google Scholar.

34 Leviathan 2.20, 129–32, Locke, Second Treatise 6.52–76.

35 Cohler, Rousseau, 4.

36 It is worth noting that nationalism so understood resembles the view of some contemporary political scientists that the sharing of a political division of labour may be regarded as an independent object of support, and even as the crucial object if the question of system persistence is to obtain any clear importance. See, for example, Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), 178Google Scholar.

37 Politics 1252a 1–8.

38 Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter cited as EN) 1098a15–18, 1099a31–33.

39 Politics 1278b22–25.

40 Politics 1280b30–35.

41 EN 1155a23–25.

42 Politics 1262b8 and 1280b39.

43 If the ultimate object of a friendship of utility must be the pleasant or the good, still a specific instance of such friendship need not furnish the pleasant or the good and such friendship in general may possess characteristics distinguishing it from the other two kinds of friendship.

44 EN 1167b13–14.

45 EN 1170a4.

46 At Politics 1303a5 Aristotle concedes that differences of race may give rise to factious activity.

47 On the proper relation between love of one's own and love of the good, see Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli(Glencoe: Free Press, 1958), IIGoogle Scholar, and Grant, George, Technology and Empire (Toronto: Anansi, 1969), 73Google Scholar.

48 Smiley, Donald V., The Canadian Political Nationality (Toronto: Methuen, 1967), 134–35Google Scholar.

49 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Control Social 3.15.

50 A significant obstacle to furnishing an account of federalism within which the partial truth of nationalism might find adequate expression consists in the fact that federalism for us, as for the Fathers of Confederation, has been largely understood in terms of that form of government established in and by the Constitution of the United States. As the late Martin Diamond has so brilliantly shown, that form was at most a compound of what was then understood as the federal principle and the unitary state of contractual liberalism. See especially Diamond's “The Federalists' View of Federalism,” in Benson, G. S. C. (ed.), Essays in Federalism (Claremont: Institute for Studies in Federalism, 1961), 21–64Google Scholar, and “The Ends of Federalism,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 3 (1973), 129–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.