This is shared less for its specific relevance to Nova Scotian politics, more so for the graphical way in which it captures party politics, especially as it relates to the colonial situation leading up to the revolution and the Whig and Tory politics immediately thereafter.
This graphic would be somewhat reversed if Nova Scotia were its subject, where Whigs were not in the majority, where those adjacent to the crown were always ready, willing and and able to counteract “the danger of leveling Republican principles”, where the political sky has been clouded over with an exclusively Tory (aka Loyalist), Canadian patina, regardless of party; where the Colonial still holds sway to this day.
Proto-Whigs and their particularist ideals lived on in Nova Scotia, as seen in Howe and the push for “Responsible government”, whereas since that time, any opposition to Torys or monarchical government in general are smeared as communistic or Marxist in nature (and in many cases, that may be an accurate assessment, since the alternative in a pre-Marxian world, Whiggery, seems to have been lost from the public conscience since or re-interpreted in a British context as an evil to be avoided). The missing ingredient was perhaps a pro-capitalist strong government republican faction with which to join hands.
It would be interesting to pursue such a project as it relates to Nova Scotian party politics. This piece was a very useful frame for me, to understand not only the revolution in a different way, but also how well Nova Scotia fit in with that world at the time, and at times since. Canada has trapped Nova Scotia into a kind of perpetually colonial, pre-revolutionary political world, a forever jurisdictional childhood where every political party is a flavor of “Tory” – regardless of their policy ideas, their allegiance lies with a foreign crown and its never ending corruption; not people, country or rule of law. The proprietary is the priority, propagandized as “public”.
For those who dream of a free country, whiggery as it relates to the American revolution seems like the key to escaping the indignity of a lifetime groveling on one’s knees for a caste of monarchists intent on dragging everyone back to a time before the Magna Carta. There will always be jurisdictions with any number of deficits, and perhaps the best that can be hoped for in Canada is monarchical monopolistic despotism, without self government, without local government, without even an elected school board.
In order for those who align themselves with the crown continue to get their way and to continue the pillaging, they’ll present an alternate reality which consists of a binary of two possibilities: the status quo, or North Korea, and that you should be thankful to the crown they haven’t sentenced you to the latter – yet.
No matter what rhetorical device or logical fallacy is utilized in order to obfuscate from the truth of the matter, a “well managed” tyranny is still a tyranny, a “friendly” despot is still a despot, Nova Scotia acting as the constitutional predicate for Hong Kong is a perpetual danger. As we’ve seen with covid and its unending mandates, there is no bottom to the tyranny that crowned sycophants will levy against their own people, who live as vassals who need government permission for their thoughts and beliefs. Canadian vassals are “free”, as long as they agree.
It is an inherent right to be able to institute government and institutions to better one’s community, it is an inherent crime to dissolve those institutions without the consent of the governed. “All power is inherent in the people; all free governments are founded in their authority and instituted for their benefit” Having those rights denied, having one’s institutions stolen by fiat only serves to harm those on the bottom. Such actions aren’t those indicative of a free country a free people or a “democracy”, no matter how many crowned Canadian psychopaths and sycophants you can find to state the opposite, (you’ll have no problem finding any number of them).
Canadians need a framework with which to protect what it is people think we have, but don’t — freedom that is deferred is no freedom at all, its illusions of freedom are only temporary, completely dependent on the fact we are next to the freest and the most powerful nation on earth. If we are to remain separate from their Union and adrift in this colony of colonies forever, as opposed to a greater North American union under their Constitution, we need a constitutional convention with which to secure basic human rights for all. Can we create a written constitution that ties all parties to an objective standard, that guarantees the rights and liberties of all people in the future, apart from a foreign crown whose history portends the exact opposite? Anything less will ensure the continuance of the constitutional degradation that is central to this sickly Canadian “democratic” construct, destined to self destruct.
Becker, Ralph E. “Diagram of the Rise and Fall of American Political Parties, from 1789 to 1880, inclusive,” 1880. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_527958