Perhaps, to borrow from Jean-Francois Revel, we shall find Confederation, like democracy, was simply an interlude: a ''historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes.'' It is, after all, so tiring, this business of nationhood. Federalism does require such sacrifices, does it not, of provincial powers and provincial ambitions. Why not let it slip off somewhere to die in peace?

Or shall we just torment the beast a while longer? Sixty thousand march the streets of Montreal to demand the premier flout the Constitution further than he has. The electors of Alberta have returned a member of the Reform party, whose protestations that ''the West wants in'' are code for ''the West will out'' if its demands go unmet.

In provincial capitals all about the country are thin figures hunched over desks, keeping accounts of how much each other province owes it. Western analysts calculate Central Canada relieved them of $60 billion through the National Energy Program. The award of the National Space Agency to Montreal leaves commentators in the French press satisfied that the federal bond is still paying an adequate fiscal return; Conrad Black puts the cost to Ontario of Quebec's allegiance at $6 billion annually in transfer payments.

There is some historical continuity in this. ''Loud sings the Little Man of the Province,'' wrote Stephen Leacock near the turn of the century, ''crying his petty gospel of Provincial Rights, grudging the gift of power, till the cry spreads and town hates town, and every hamlet of the countryside shouts for its share of the plunder and of pelf.''

ENDLESS HAGGLING

But something new is at work here. Monetary policy, according to the premiers, should now be given over to their control, via some form of regional interest rates. Federal fiscal policy is already their captive: spending cannot be decreased, nor taxes raised, short of endless haggling. Free trade within our border has been a fiction for years; now Dominion trade policy turns on the support of the provinces, too. Doubtless defence is next. Let's just kill Canada, for kindness's sake.

Perhaps that is what the premiers had in mind at Meech Lake. Having taken the Constitution hostage in 1981, the government of Quebec found Brian Mulroney's Dominion government willing to trade the coat of arms for its release. Not only was the ''notwithstanding'' clause, the price of provincial acceptance of the 1981 Constitution, left intact; now Quebec was to have its ''distinct society'' as well, adding yet another override on charter rights.

And to keep the regional sum-keepers happy, the rest of the provinces were thrown the Supreme Court and the Senate and their very own constitutional veto. In place of the fathers of Confederation, Macdonald and Cartier and Brown, we now have the auditors of Confederation: Bourassa, Getty, Devine.

In his letter to La Presse last week, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau defended his decision to proceed without Quebec in 1981 on the grounds that otherwise constitutional reform could not have proceeded.

Likewise, ratification of Meech Lake is today urged on grounds that without Quebec, further constitutional reform would be, if not impossible, certainly unthinkable. Yet those who fear the unanimity requirement makes Senate reform also, if not impossible, improbable are given Meech Lake as an example of how easily concert is obtained.

Meech Lake was what the Americans call a ''runaway convention.'' Its very unanimity speaks of the impossibility of unanimous action, for Meech Lake is the culmination of 60 years of provincial stonewalling on patriation, the charter and the amending formula, aimed at prying new powers out of federal domain. Only by giving them everything they sought could agreement be reached.

As long as they lacked anything on their list, they had an incentive to refuse to sign - for to agree would close the bargaining, removing their source of leverage. This was reinforced by the least sign of weakness on the part of the federal government: only the real apprehension of getting nothing for their intransigence could induce the provinces to settle for merely something.

There are worse things than constitutional stalemate. If the price of agreement is the death of Confederation, then let us have no agreement, and muddle on. At the least, if Meech Lake is passed, we shall have to reopen the flag debate. In the event, Eugene Forsey has recommended ''a distinctive flag, which would surely stir the blood of every citizen of the 10 mini-states: 10 jackasses eating leaves off a single maple tree.''