In this article, the author challenges the ideals and beliefs that other scholars who study Canadian Confederation hold in regards to how confederation came about. The author's argument is that the Canadian federal state may have been a result of the debates in Britain, France and America during the eighteenth and nineteenth-century. The debate in Britain, France and America was between republican values and commercial ideology that came about at the time of Enlightenment. He believes understanding the political debates going on at the time may help gain a more rounded understanding of the political issues that were happening in Canada during the nineteenth-century post-confederation and how confederation came about through those political
