CHAPTER V.

CANADA.

WHEN we come to regard our question from the colonial point of view the first place in any consideration must obviously be given to Canada. The national problem is there presented to us in a crucial form. The growth and consolidation of the Dominion have done more than anything else to make manifest the anomalous condition of the Empire. In it we have a colony with a population twice as large as the United States had when they became independent, larger than that of England in Elizabeth's time, or than that of some considerable European States at the present day. It is a population which has proved itself equal to the highest duties of citizenship. The slowness of earlier growth has not been without advantage, since it has unquestionably given steadiness and maturity to political thought. With comparative suddenness Canada has now caught the inspiration of a large national life. Vast undertakings in the direction of material progress are entered upon with confidence and executed with success. On political lines her people have been the first to prove by actual experiment {116} on a large scale the adaptability of a federal system to British methods of representative and responsible government. Since confederation was entered into nearly twenty-five years ago self-reliance has become the keynote of Canadian life and has produced its legitimate and ordinary results. In material development, in political organization, in the spirit of the people, the Dominion has reached the stage looked forward to by early thinkers on colonial problems as the one at which it might reasonably be expected to assume an independent national existence. It must therefore soon bring to the test the theories of these thinkers as to the results of national expansion.

The position of Canada is made unique among British colonies by another condition. She is so placed geographically that annexation to another kindred state is a manifestly possible alternative to either independence or continued British connection. Whether independence, annexation to the United States, or a closer and permanent union with the Empire is most consistent with the honour and interest of the Canadian people, and whether the separation of Canada from the Empire is a matter of indifference to the British nation at large, are questions to be here discussed.

Facts of geography, facts of history, and questions of trade relations, must enter chiefly into the consideration.

There is an advantage in giving the first place to geography.

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A glance at the map shows the relation of Canada to the Oceanic Empire of which it now forms a part. It fronts towards Europe on the Atlantic and towards Asia on the Pacific. On both oceans it gives the finest naval positions that a great maritime power could desire, and the only positions possible for British people on the American continent. A wonderful system of waterways penetrates, from the Atlantic frontage, unto the very heart of the continent, to prairies which are the greatest undeveloped wheat area in the world, lands capable of supporting a large population and of proved capacity to yield a vast surplus of food products. The trend of the Great Lakes and of the St. Lawrence towards the point which gives the shortest sea connection with Europe indicates the natural direction in which this food surplus will chiefly flow. Should the still open question of the summer navigation of Hudson's Bay by grain vessels be settled in the affirmative, even the facilities offered by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence for cheap transit would be eclipsed, and western wheat placed on English markets at a rate hitherto unknown. But this is a contingency, and it is perhaps better to confine the attention to settled facts.

The significance of Canada's geographical position, facing and commanding the two great northern oceans at the points nearest to the opposite continents of Europe and Asia, is supplemented by geological facts of extreme national interest. At the very point where the Dominion stretches out furthest towards Europe, {118} and where the maritime provinces furnish open harbours all the year round, we find in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton inexhaustible supplies of excellent coal. The coal areas of this region are the only sources: of supply in Eastern America northward of Pennsylvania, and the only sources directly upon the eastern coast of the continent, where they seem to give a singular advantage for both transatlantic and transcontinental trade. Crossing now the 3800 miles which measure the breadth of the continent, we come to the Pacific coast, and the excellent harbours with which it also is everywhere indented. The importance to the Empire of these harbours is manifest, since they are the only ports under the British flag on the whole Pacific coast of America from Cape Horn to the Behring Sea, the only base of naval supply, the only means the Empire has of matching the Russian depot, Vladivostock (soon to be in direct connection with St. Petersburg itself), over which they have the great advantage of being open all the year round. They furnish the base from which the trade of the North Pacific is, and must be, protected. For the defence and prosecution of trade, still more important than the harbours themselves is the fact that in the Island of Vancouver, where Canada stretches out so as to give the shortest route to Japan and China, we have again an abundance of coal. The importance of these deposits is enhanced by the circumstance that all other coal found on the Pacific coast from Cape Horn northward to Puget Sound is of an inferior quality, {119} and limited in quantity. San Francisco itself obtains a large part of its coal from Vancouver Island in the north, or from the British colony of New South Wales on the other side of the Pacific.

Looking East and West, then, the Dominion has its maritime position confirmed by its supplies of coal. This is not all. Deposits extending over thousands of square miles have been discovered midway in the great prairie region, at once solving the fuel problem for a treeless country and supplying the force that carries trade and population across the continent. Later discoveries in the Rocky Mountains indicate the presence there of an anthracite coal peculiarly adapted to naval use, and likely to supply our ships in the Pacific with fuel of a quality equal to any that British mines can furnish.

The facts of Canada's maritime position thus broadly stated will, I think, leave on most minds the impression that should the country pass under a foreign flag, so that British ships could claim only the rights of aliens in the harbours of the Atlantic and Pacific, or even under an independent flag, when they could enjoy only the rights of neutrals, the change would mean a complete revolution in the conditions under which British commerce is protected, and the influence of the nation maintained on the two oceans.

There is, again, a military as well as a naval aspect from which to regard Canada's geographical relation to the Empire.

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The energy of the Canadian people has within a few years linked together the Pacific and Atlantic frontages of the Dominion by a great railway system. The new line has the advantage of being shorter than any other transcontinental route, and crosses the Rocky Mountains at a level 1500 feet below any line further south. The anticipated obstacle of snow blockade in the mountain district has been effectually overcome; in the Eastern or Intercolonial section, where alone this difficulty recurs from drifting snow, it is being reduced to a minimum. Practically it now amounts to the possibility of one or two days' delay twice or thrice during the winter months, and apparently even this might be obviated by the more liberal use of snow-sheds. A winter often passes without any obstruction worth mentioning. The line is unquestionably the most effective among those which cross the American continent. It has enabled English letters to reach Japan in twenty-one days instead of the forty required by the old routes. Military authorities pronounce it a valuable addition to the Empire's means of communication with the East. Its climatic advantage over the Cape of Good Hope and Suez Canal routes at some seasons of the year may yet add strength to its other recommendations. Compared with these routes it is also the safest, since furthest removed from the possibility of European attack. Of its military efficiency there can be no reasonable doubt. The manager of the Canada Pacific Railway told me that his company had made representations {121} to the Imperial Government that it would undertake to transport men in blocks of 5000 from troop-ships at Halifax to troop-ships at Vancouver within seven days. His statement is justified by the fact that a single train has already carried 600 marines and blue-jackets with their officers from the Pacific to the Atlantic within that time. Such trains can be indefinitely multiplied. Thus a squadron at Vancouver could be reinforced from Portsmouth in about a fortnight by this route, a squadron in the China Seas in a little more than three weeks. A fifty days' voyage in the first case by Cape Horn, a forty days' voyage in the latter by the Suez Canal, has hitherto been the rule. Such facts illustrate the greatness of the changes which are taking place in the conditions of our naval defence. The swift steamships which complete the Eastern connection are constructed for immediate transformation in case of necessity into armed cruisers for the transport of troops and for the protection of the commerce which they are themselves creating. Supplemented by ships of a corresponding character on the Atlantic, such a route might in a national emergency prove an immense addition to the military resources of the Empire, and especially for the defence of India. The mere fact of its existence adds to the nation's military prestige, and the consequent hesitation of any other power in making attack.

A word should be added about Canada's geographical relation to the telegraphic system of the {122} Empire. The existing lines of communication between the United Kingdom and the Australasian colonies and India have never yet been tested by the chances of a European war. In all cases they pass over foreign countries or through shallow seas whence they could be easily fished up and cut. What an entire break of this connection would mean in the commercial world may be judged from the fact that even now more than a thousand pounds a day are spent on cablegrams between Britain and the Australasian colonies alone.

What it would mean in the emergencies of war may be left to the imagination. The panic caused in Australia a few years since by an accidental break in the line at a time when war with Russia seemed imminent clearly proved the importance of the question.

These considerations sufficiently indicate the immense advantage and greater security which would come from an alternative route across Canada. The case was clearly stated by Mr. Sandford Fleming, the distinguished Canadian engineer, in an address to the Colonial Conference of 1887, to which he was a delegate: 'The western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway--Vancouver--is in telegraphic communication with London. Communications have passed between London and Vancouver, and replies returned within a few minutes. From Vancouver cables may be laid to Australasia by way of Hawaii or they may be laid from one British island to {123} another, and thus bring New Zealand and all the Australasian colonies directly into telegraphic connection with Great Britain, without passing over any soil which is not British, and by passing only through seas as remote as possible from any difficulties which may arise in Europe.

'Again, India can be reached from Australasia by the lines of the Eastern Telegraphic Company; South Africa can be reached through the medium of the Eastern and South African Company: and thus, by supplying the one link wanting, the Home Government will have the means provided to telegraph to every important British colony and dependency around the circumference of the globe, without approaching Europe at any point.'

The advantages, commercial and military, of a line of communication thus isolated and national, as compared with those which pass through or near the political storm-centres of Europe, are too obvious to require elaboration. Since 1887 a survey of this route has been going on, though far too slowly, under the direction of the Admiralty; groups of islands useful for operating the line have been annexed, and the laying of the cable seems only to depend on a more general recognition of its national necessity.

What has now been said indicates roughly Canada's geographical relation to the question of a united oceanic empire, of which she may fairly be regarded as the key-stone. What is next to be considered is {124} her relation to the great state which lies along her southern border, and which divides with her about equally the bulk of the North American continent. Here our study of the map must go hand in hand with the study of Canadian history.

A series of great lakes and rivers, and, for the rest, astronomical or arbitrary boundary lines, constitute the only geographical divisions between the United States and Canada. The political and moral line of separation is due to the fact that more than a century ago the colonies which formed the germ of the United States revolted and threw off their connection with Great Britain; those which formed the nucleus of Canada elected to remain united with the mother-land and to work out their political destiny in accordance with British institutions.

The geographical boundary, like those which divide many other nations, seems indefinite and artificial to the mere student of maps; it has been engraved deeply enough in the hearts of Canadian people. It had to be defended in 1775, and once more in the war of 1812, at much expense of life and treasure. Crossing it in 1783 and succeeding years, the persecuted Loyalists of the American Revolution found safety and freedom under the British flag[1]. Again it {125} had to be defended from the Fenians organized in 1866 on American soil. Fishing disputes and boundary disputes, embittered by Canadian dissatisfaction with the methods of American diplomacy, have kept attention fixed upon the line of national demarcation. Still more sharply has it been defined by national habits of thought. South of the line, for at least three-quarters of a century after the Revolution, on a thousand fourth of July platforms dislike and hatred of all things British have been studiously inculcated. Even now an appeal to anti-British feeling may decide the fate of a Presidential election, and has been the winning trick of party politics. North of the line, at every public gathering and on every public holiday up to the present moment, loyalty to the British nationality for which such sacrifices were made, and allegiance to institutions which have borne thoroughly the test of application in a new country, are recognized as of the very essence of the popular life. The mere suspicion that these principles were being trifled with by a few erratic and irresponsible members of a great and otherwise perfectly loyal political party has excluded that party from power for a period almost beyond the limit of political experience in British countries. It is scarcely possible to imagine conditions under which communities kindred in race, language, and {126} literature could have had a more decisive and divergent bias given to their history, to national traditions and enthusiasms, to everything that lies at the roots of individual political life. They have prevailed decisively against contiguity, against commercial intercourse, social intercourse, literary intercourse, against a considerable interchange of population. Those who know best the passions which control the popular mind in Canada are fixed in the belief that the retention of a political individuality independent of the United States has become the touchstone of Canadian national honour.

To understand why this is so we must recall and account for one primary fact, remarkable enough in itself and probably unique in history. We can easily understand that it requires no very marked natural boundary to form the line of division between nations which differ in language, religion, and descent, as in the case of European states. But in America we see that an almost purely artificial line of division has for more than a century been drawn across the breadth of a continent, and between two peoples who speak the same language, study the same literature, and are without any decisive distinctions of religious creed. There has been a great drawing together between the United States and Canada, as between England and Canada, during the last twenty-five years, but it is no greater in the one case than the other, and proceeds on social and literary, not on political lines. Evidently there {127} is in addition to the geographical line some fundamental principle or fact which separates the two countries.

The same profound national convulsion which gave birth to the United States gave birth to the real life of Canada as well. As much principle and as much self-sacrifice were involved in the act of the Loyalists who gave to British Canada its peculiar character as in the struggles of the Revolutionists who founded the American Union. For what he believed a great principle, the Revolutionist broke down an old loyalty, cut his ties with the past, and engaged in the battle for independence. The Loyalist, on the other hand, with an abiding faith in the institutions of his mother-land, not to be shaken by the single mistake of a king, a minister, or a parliament, elected to stand by the losing side, to depend upon constitutional agitation to secure the full political liberty he too desired, and so sacrificed his all to retain his connection with the past, and came to Canada. No victory that Britain ever won by land or sea is more worthy to be blazoned on the pages' of her history than the loyal devotion of that great body of men and women, who, refusing to abjure their ancient allegiance, after the Revolutionary war, gave up their homes, their professions, and all that made life comfortable, crossed over into what was then a forest wilderness, and built up those Canadian provinces which have since grown into a great British confederation.

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Who will venture to say that the faith of the Loyalist has not been as fully justified as that of the Revolutionist? American institutions have not developed any higher forms of political or religious freedom than those which are found in Canada and in other colonies of the Empire today under British institutions. They have not produced a higher tone of public morals or a greater purity of social life. They have not even diminished the risk of great national convulsion. They have not made impossible the oppression or abuse of inferior races, black, red, or yellow. They have not rendered statesmanship more noble and unselfish, justice more incorruptible, human life more sacred, domestic ties more holy, the people more God-fearing. I do not believe that there is a Canadian from one end of the Dominion to the other who honestly believes that American institutions have equalled, much less surpassed, his own in anyone of these particulars. If these are the things which ennoble a nation--if these are marks of true success--the descendants of the Loyalists have no reason to regret the choice which their ancestors made at the time of the Revolutionary war.

The strain under which that choice was made, and the courageous loyalty which inspired it, have never had the recognition throughout the Empire which they deserved. One English historian, however, has done justice to the United Empire Loyalists. Mr. Lecky says: 'There were brave and honest men {129} in America; who were proud of the great and free Empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude all the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the Crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence, and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was, at least, as worthy as that for which Washington had fought.'

That ideal was the conception of a United Empire.

How profoundly this great Loyalist tradition, reinforced as it has been by many other considerations and circumstances, has affected Canadian life, can be gauged only by the actual state of Canadian feeling. Mr. Goldwin Smith has spared no endeavour to prove that the assimilation of Canadian and American sentiment is well-nigh complete. Let us, instead of consulting his imaginative statements, study the actual and quite recent expressions of representative public men and bodies.

Commencing in Eastern Canada, we find Attorney-General Longley, of Nova Scotia, a pronounced {130} opponent of the present Dominion Government, who in past times has seemed to approach very nearly to the advocacy of annexation, now writing in the _Fortnightly_ for March, 1891: 'There is still a deep-seated objection in the minds of a large majority of the people of Canada to union with the United States. It may be unphilosophical, it may be irrational, but it exists. ... It is not very easy to blot out a century of history in a day, and the record of the past hundred years has had a constant tendency to confirm British Americans in their devotion to British as against American interests. ... It is simply not a practical solution of the future of Canada to suggest political union with the United States, because the preponderating majority of the people will not hear of it. Time is the great miracle worker and may change all this; but we must speak of things as they are. No material considerations will induce the Canadian people at present to accept political union with the United States.'

Archbishop O'Brien, also a Nova Scotian, and the most representative and influential Roman Catholic of Eastern Canada, has in many public utterances expressed his conviction that annexation to the United States would involve for Canada moral damage and political degradation.

New Brunswick, out of its sixteen Parliamentary representatives, had in the last Parliament one whose attitude was ambiguous, since as an editor he seemed to advocate, as a politician he abjured, the idea of {131} annexation. Journalistic ability of a high order and the fact that he represented a commercial constituency having closer trade connection with the New England ports than any other Canadian town made tenable for a time this anomalous position. A decisive vote in the last election left him out of public life, and thus deprived Mr. Goldwin Smith of perhaps the only illustration of his claim that the advocacy of annexation does not exclude from the Dominion Parliament.

Passing on to Quebec we find Mr. Mercier, till lately the local French Canadian leader, hastening to supplement, as he not long since did in Paris to a _Times_ correspondent, an expression of opposition to Imperial Federation by the statement that there is 'no party in Canada ... in favour of annexation to the United States.' In Ontario we find Mr. Blake, the strongest man of the Liberal party, withdrawing from public life because he thought he discovered, in the policy of his political friends, a tendency towards annexation. This, at least, is the interpretation which suggests itself to the ordinary reader of his published explanation. The repudiation of any desire for annexation was general, vehement, and doubtless sincere, on the part of the more conspicuous Liberal leaders against whom it had been charged.

Mr. Mowat, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, has lately written a letter for publication, in which he says: 'There are in most counties a few annexationists, {132} in some counties more than in others; but the aggregate in the Dominion, I am sure, is small when compared with the aggregate population. The great majority of our people, I believe and trust, are not prepared to hand over this great Dominion to a foreign nation for any present commercial consideration which may be proposed. We love our Sovereign and are proud of our status as British subjects. The Imperial authorities have refused nothing in the way of self-government which our representatives have asked for. ... To the United States and its people we are all most friendly. We recognize the advantages which would go to both them and us from extended trade relations, and we are willing to go as far in that direction as shall not involve, now or in the future, political union; but there Canadians of every party have hitherto drawn the line. ... North America is amply large enough for two independent nations, and two friendly nations would be better for both populations than one nation embracing the whole continent.' In another formal statement of the policy of the Liberal party in Canada, Mr. Mowat has said: 'We are as much attached to our nation as the people of the United States are to theirs. The attachment to their nation does our neighbours honour, and intelligent men amongst them cannot regard otherwise our attachment to our nation. As no commercial, or other material advantage, real or supposed, would induce the people of the United States to change their allegiance, so neither, I hope, {133} will the prospect of some material advantage induce Canadians to change their allegiance to the Empire. ... For the Liberal party or any important section of it to favour political union with the United States would be death to all hope of Liberal ascendancy in the Councils of the Dominion.'

Going still further West to the prairie regions and British Columbia, hitherto relied upon by Mr. Goldwin Smith for producing a population free from the political traditions and prejudices of the East, we find a compact vote recorded for a Government which makes the maintenance of British connection the corner-stone of its policy, and a chief ground of appeal to the constituencies.

Lastly, we come back to the Dominion Parliament itself. There, in 1890, Liberal and Conservative, Frenchman and Englishman alike, by an absolutely unanimous vote, given with the avowed object of silencing discussion upon the point, united in declaring their unwavering faith in the advantage for Canada of its existing national connection. Mr. Smith claims that geography is too strong for national sentiment, but these are the hard facts which he has to confront in Canada at the end of more than a century of her separate existence. Evidence could scarcely be more conclusive that the main facts are those to which he resolutely shuts his eyes.

The expressions which I have given are those of moderate and distinctly representative men, but there is a deeper passion which must be taken into account.

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Could annexation under any circumstances be effected peacefully and at the ballot-box? I doubt it. If a day should ever come when a bare majority of Canadians voted for annexation, would such a decision be accepted by the minority? To many it would mean Revolution and would be treated as such. It must be remembered that nationality is based on feelings which often lie too deep for mere argument or discussion. In all ages of the world it has been a fighting issue, a question on which minorities yielded only on compulsion. Against mere numbers, moreover, intensity of passion and depth of conviction weigh heavily. I have never heard the question openly discussed, and express an opinion upon it with some diffidence, but to me it seems certain that only coercion would make a very large and influential section of Canadian population submit to the changes which annexation would involve. And I think such a minority would be justified in the eyes of all who place honour and devotion to lofty national tradition before material gain.

Living close to the United States, Canadians can see many practical reasons, outside of sentimental ones, why they should not commit the fortunes of their country to an alliance with those of the great republic. Assuming commercial advantage, the political objections might well seem decisive as a counterbalance. The price which the States have to pay for their wonderful career of prosperity is not yet clear. The amazing flood of immigration with which {135} it has been attended is steadily diluting the Anglo-Saxon element and diminishing the relative influence of the native American. A well-known Mayor of Chicago not long since outlined for me the elements of the population over which his municipal rule extended. The analysis would form a curious study for those who would forecast the American type of the next century: A recent event has revealed the fact that America's population includes a great mass of Italians, little in sympathy with the institutions under which they live, and reinforced by emigrants who crowd every steamer that leaves the Mediterranean to cross the Atlantic.

I lately heard a representative American writer and thinker in England say that in his judgment the Irish question was becoming a more disturbing factor in American politics and a more difficult one to deal with, than it has been for Great Britain. Of the value of this sincerely held opinion an outsider cannot perhaps form a just estimate, but we know that a split in Tammany may practically decide a Presidential election, and a Canadian may fairly think that any problem of race or creed with which he has to deal is not more perplexing.

There still remains the race issue in the South. The war of Secession settled the slavery question: it left the negro question as a dead weight upon the future. Thoughtful Americans themselves are among the first to confess that they have not yet seriously attempted to grapple with it. In the first outburst {136} of generosity, or as a move in the game of party politics, the franchise was given along with liberty, and the result no one as yet foresees. Clearly the country has to face the prospect of a steadily consolidating zone of black population stretching far across the continent. Should the Dominion be annexed to the United States all the voting weight of Canada within the union would for a generation to come scarcely balance this single negro element of America's population, supposing that, in accordance with Canadian ideas of political justice, the negroes should be allowed (as they are not now) to exercise their legal right.

The violence and insecurity of life which have marked the settlement of the West, and still prevail over whole States in the South, are unknown in Canada. People ask why lynch law, as little known in new British countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as it is in Britain itself, is still a common phenomenon in the administration of American justice. Canada has managed a large Indian population with little serious difficulty; her neighbours during the same years have been engaged in a series of wars of extermination, apparently the outcome for the most part of maladministration in Indian affairs. The confusion of marriage and divorce laws throughout the various states has become a serious evil, for which no remedy has yet been devised. If Canadians have sometimes to wrestle with political corruption, they at least do so resolutely and {137} effectively, while there is a widespread belief that among their neighbours it is a permanent and accepted factor in party government.

These points are not dwelt upon in a spirit of petty criticism, but it seems fair to mention them as facts which influence powerfully Canadian judgment in forming an opinion on the comparative merits of the political systems which they see working side by side.

One other consideration beyond that of commercial advantage has often been thrust upon Canadians as a reason why they should seek annexation. They are told that so long as they remain politically connected with Britain they will be exposed to the chances of war with the United States, since the Dominion would naturally be made the first point of attack should differences arise between the two countries. It is urged that resistance to such an attack would be useless and absurd, and that Canada's only guarantee of safety from future subjugation and the military occupation of the country is to form as quickly as she can and on the best terms she can, a civil union with the power that thus threatens her.

If the appeal to mere commercial advantage seemed mercenary, this appeal to cowardice seems base. Certainly it is one which has never made any impression on the Canadian mind. Perhaps this is mere recklessness. It might be argued, however, that 4000 miles of frontier are as perplexing for attack as for defence. Canadians remember that in 1812 they successfully faced a corresponding danger when the odds were as {138} much against them, and numbers as disproportionate, as they are today. They remember that to crush the Southern States, fighting without outside help, required the most expensive and destructive war of modern times, prolonged over renewed campaigns. They know at any rate that the task of subduing them is one which would not be lightly undertaken. But picture the worst that such a war could bring: defeat, military occupation, complete subjugation. If war between Britain and the United States be, as is claimed, a possibility of the future, would not each and all of these be for Canadians infinitely preferable to placing themselves in such a position that; having abandoned a country which they loved and joined themselves to a country which they feared, they would by that act be pledged to use their arms, their means, their collective forces as a people, against the land that gave them birth, that had extended over them the strong shield of her protection through a hundred years of struggling infancy, and had freely given them the best she had to give of perfect freedom and noble institutions?

I am satisfied that this argument alone is quite sufficient to make annexation to the United States a moral impossibility for the Canadian people. They may join heartily in every process by which their mother-land and the great republic are drawn more closely together; they may even be in no small degree the link which binds them together in friendly feeling. But to expose themselves to the possibility of hostile {139} conflict with that mother-land for the sake of a temporary commercial advantage or from motives of cowardice would make them incur the contempt of the people they leave and the contempt of the people they join. In the long run it may be taken for granted that the path of commercial and every other prosperity will be found along the path of national honour. That national honour is looked upon as the issue at stake there can be no reasonable doubt.

In considering more closely the question of commercial advantage it may in the outset be remarked that no truly noble individual life, much less any truly noble national life, was ever yet built up on principles and purposes entirely mercenary. The landmarks in history to which the human heart everywhere turns with a thrill of instinctive pride are the periods when nations have forgotten, for a time, self-interest and the love of gain, and in the glow of patriotic enthusiasm have made great sacrifices from motives of principle, affection, honour, and loyalty, British Canada owes its foundation to such an outburst of lofty spirit. The United States themselves were founded, as a nation, upon what seemed at the time an utter defiance of commercial advantage, and the heroic periods of that country, as of every other, the periods which gave birth to all that is noblest and purest in it, were not the times of its wealth and luxury, but the times of its self-denial, suffering, effort, and sacrifice. Prosperity must be an incident of noble national life; not the sole foundation on which it is built.

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Again, while it would be absurd to undervalue material prosperity, we must constantly remember that its highest value consists as much in the discipline of the powers required for its acquisition as in the acquisition or possession itself. This must be as true of nations as daily experience shows it to be in the case of individuals. When Canadians are told that they must look to political union with the United States for any increase of commercial prosperity, and that such a connection will at once draw them into a tide of greater business energy, I cannot but think that a prosperity purchased by such means is obtained by the sacrifice of that which gives prosperity its greatest worth. Speaking as a Canadian to Canadian audiences, I have sometimes put the argument in this way: 'We have a country with enormous capacity for development. The field is large enough and varied enough to satisfy the greatest energy and every form of it. The consolidation of a national strength, the linking together of our widespread provinces by railway systems, the opening up of our great North-West, seem to have removed the chief obstacles which have hitherto stood in our way. Under such circumstances, or under any circumstances, would it not be infinitely more worthy of us, would it not be a far better national training and discipline, to set ourselves resolutely to work to supply that in which we are deficient, rather than to seek it ignominiously at the hands of our neighbours? Can it be true that we have not the strength of brain or hand to wrest from nature the {141} success and prosperity which others have won? If we have not, then let us not add to our weakness a spirit of mean dependence.'

Looking at the question under aspects such as these, I find it impossible to conceive that Canadians, who have for more than a century received their national impulse and development from a political system which they believe the best in the world, for which they have continued to profess the most devoted regard, and to which they are tied by a thousand bonds of affectionate sympathy, will deliberately, in cold blood, and for commercial reasons only, dissolve that connection, and join themselves to a state with the history and traditions of which they have little sympathy, and to whose form of government they object. To take such a course would indicate an extraordinary degradation of public sentiment.

When, therefore, I am told that geography and commercial tendencies are strong, I can only reply that the bias of national life and loyalty to the spiritual forces which give a people birth are stronger still. A sensitive regard for public honour is infinitely stronger.

But even the question of commercial advantage has two aspects.

Comparing the relative advantages of the United States and the British Empire we find that with the former lies that of continental isolation--a position so secure, peopled as the country now is, that no external power could hope to shake it. Attack might be annoying and detrimental, but by no means fatal, {142} for the chief dependence of the country is not upon external trade. Even a blockade of all its ports would stimulate internal activity, for the United States are almost self-sufficing in the matter of production, and manufacturing industry would have the whole union entirely to itself. A very remarkable and advantageous position we must admit this to be, freeing the country from external dangers to which other nations are subject, and so leaving it in a better position to grapple with those vast internal problems of race and colour which confront it.

Very different indeed is the advantage which Britain enjoys. She has, however, no reason to envy the great Republic. Instead of continental compactness she has world-wide diffusion--precisely that kind of diffusion which satisfies the necessities of countries which depend, and must always to a considerable degree depend, upon external trade. It would be too much perhaps to say that at the present moment the British Empire possesses the same security on the ocean that the United States have on their continent, but it is not too much to affirm that with her command of the strongest maritime positions of the world, her backing of vigorous and growing populations, and her resources in money and trained men for naval equipment, she could soon become so. This is the kind of security which Britain requires with her vast outflow of merchandise--her inflow of food and raw material. It is the kind of security needed by countries like Australia, New Zealand, or South {143} Africa, which have an enormous export of special products for which the character of the country is specially adapted. If no question of national honour were involved, and if Canada had to make a choice purely upon grounds of national security between what is offered to her from connection with the United States and with the Empire, the decision would depend upon whether she aspired to great commercial connections or would be content with merely continental relations. It is certain that if the United States ever regain control of their own carrying trade, or if by the development of manufacturing energy they are led to look largely to outside markets, they will feel more and more the limitations imposed by a purely continental position. Canada has at the present time large maritime interests. Her great length of sea coast, the productive fisheries east and, west, the facility for ship-building given by her forests, have stimulated her maritime activity to such an extent that in tonnage of shipping she now ranks fourth among the nations of the world, counting the United Kingdom as one. Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of the world, taking part in the carrying trade. Several great steam-ship lines cross the Atlantic, another connects the Pacific coast with Japan and China--a line is projected to Australasia--others carry on trade with the eastern and western coasts of America and with the West Indies. The instincts and conditions which have made British people a maritime and trading race are renewed in {144} the Dominion. Canada's interest is to retain the national connection which gives her commerce the best opportunities, her fleets the surest protection in all parts of the world.

The Canadian shipmaster or trader knows that at ports all over the world, at Hong Kong and Calcutta, at Malta or Melbourne, at the Cape or Auckland, in a word, at all the great centres of the world's ocean commerce, he can claim the protection of the national flag, he has a right to apply to the British consul, he can rely on the prestige of the British name. These are rights of which the Canadian knows the value. They are rights which he is not likely to relinquish, for they have been honestly won, first by retaining his allegiance at the price of much sacrifice in the revolution of 1776, and then by steady persistence in that allegiance at all costs through more than a century. He knows they are rights that no other nation can give him in equal degree.

It is in trade relations, however, that Canada's interest is supposed to look away from Great Britain or the rest of the Empire, and towards the United States. Twenty years ago the American Republic entered upon its policy of excluding as far as possible the products of other countries, and among them those of Canada, by a high protective tariff. That policy has been steadily maintained until it has reached a climax in the McKinley tariff. It had previously forced a protective policy upon Canada itself. It seems clear that the Dominion has suffered {145} to some extent commercially by this exclusion from the markets of her own continent, by the resolute determination of their neighbours that Canadians shall not, as Canadians, have any share in the prosperity of the United States. That she has gained in energy, self-reliance, and national purpose is equally clear to anyone who attempts to measure the splendid and successful efforts which she has since confederation and under this exclusion made at self-development. That the moral gain infinitely outweighs the commercial loss, I, for one, firmly believe. But there are those who argue that for the commercial advantage which it is anticipated would flow from union with the United States, the continental independence of the country, its historical traditions, its political institutions, its nationality, should be abandoned. In Great Britain itself there are found many who assume as a matter of course that commercial attraction will inevitably lead to the political absorption of the Dominion into the United States. I believe that the opinion is a mistaken one. The grounds upon which it is based deserve examination. Let it be remembered that no one now ventures to bring forward in support of this proposition any argument based on the superior freedom or excellence of American institutions, social or political. The day for that is past. We can assert, without fear of contradiction, that the condition of the self-governing colonies of Britain finds no parallel in the world in making government an immediate reflection of the {146} popular will, and so in giving the utmost possible freedom and weight of influence to the individual citizen. When Lord Dufferin told an American audience at Chicago that Canadians would not breathe freely in a country where the Executive was placed for years together beyond the reach of the popular will, and was not under the constant supervision of the Legislative bodies, he indicated a vital difference which distinguishes the form of popular government in British countries from the American system, a difference which colonists think is all in favour of the former. If the government of any self-ruling dependency of England is bad, the fault lies in the character of the constituency, not in the form of government.

The question, then, is purely one of commercial advantage, a certain supposed and possibly temporary per-centage of trade gain which Canadians would secure by abjuring their national allegiance.

Grounds are not wanting for the belief that the inevitable tendency of several very great trade interests of Canada is more towards Great Britain and some of the British dependencies than towards the United States. From their position and physical character Canada and the United States must in many ways be rival producers. Both are great grain and cattle raising countries. Both wish their surplus of agricultural productions to reach the consuming millions of the old world, or the tropical countries like the West Indies where they may be exchanged for articles of {147} use or luxury. Certain it is that the United States now export to Great Britain many millions of pounds' worth of those very products which Canada sends in smaller quantities to the States. Such a fact scarcely bears out the assertion that the United States furnish the natural market of Canada. It rather suggests that better organization for transport and greater commercial enterprize would make the English market the more valuable of the two for Canada.

But while urging this view of ultimate trade tendencies there is no need to underestimate the present advantage and convenience which Canada would derive from the freest possible access to American markets. These may be at once admitted, the only qualification being that Canada cannot afford to purchase advantage and convenience at the price of national dishonour or humiliation. Let us remember, however, that advantage and convenience are not confined to one side.

It is already true, it is becoming increasingly true, that the United States must have Canadian products. They leap over even the barrier of a McKinley tariff. American forests are nearly exhausted--those of Canada are not only still of immense extent, but practically inexhaustible, since nature has reserved by conditions of soil and climate, large areas exclusively for the growth of trees. Canadian waters have well nigh a monopoly of the best fish of the American continent. From Nova Scotia northward gulf and bay swarm with fish which pour downwards {148} from the cold Arctic regions in numbers that never fail, and of the best quality. The lakes and rivers of the north-west might well supply the whole of the centre of the continent with fresh-water fish. On the Pacific the Canadian monopoly is not so complete since the purchase of Alaska by the United States, but the fisheries of British Columbia have a great future. On the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the inland prairie region Canada can supply coal in abundance to regions in the United States without deposits of their own. American brewers find it necessary to have Canadian barley, and are earnestly petitioning Congress to reduce the duty from thirty to the old rate of ten cents per bushel. So too with farm produce of other kinds. American consumers now pay a higher price for the eggs and poultry once drawn from Canada but driven by the McKinley tariff to seek new, and as it turns out, fairly satisfactory markets in Great Britain. That tariff must inevitably result in a largely increased development of manufacturing industry, a closer pressure of consumption upon producing power in the matter of food in the United States, and a consequent increase in the demand, already very noticeable in New England towns, for easy access to Canadian supplies. The freedom of the markets of the continent is likely ere long to be a stronger election cry in the United States than it has been in the Dominion[2].

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Something ought perhaps to be said in reference to the part which Canada seems likely to take in supplying food to the United Kingdom. The area of wheat production has shifted rapidly on the American continent, first westward from New York State to Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, then northward to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota. Till within a few years past these northern states of the Union were supposed to mark the limit of successful wheat cultivation. Actual experience has now proved that it is several hundreds of miles further north, and that in Canadian territory is included the largest and richest undeveloped wheat area in the world. Allowance must be made for occasional early frosts, which are, {150} however, not so disastrous as Indian or Australian droughts, and may apparently be successfully combated by fall ploughing and early sowing. When this allowance is made, it seems clearly proved that in both quantity and quality the north-western provinces and territories of Canada will soon take a leading place in grain supply. The railway, which opened up the country to settlement, was completed in 1885. Yet in 1887 the districts which it reached, with but a scattered population, yielded 12,000,000 bushels of surplus wheat; in 1890, 16,000,000 bushels; and the estimate for 1891 is 21,000,000 bushels. Eight times this quantity would supply the whole British demand. At the present average of production 100,000 farmers thrown into the north-west, which {151} is capable of absorbing many hundreds of thousands, would raise all the wheat that now comes into the United Kingdom. Statisticians are already forecasting the date when the growth of population, going on side by side with the exhaustion of the more fertile prairie lands in the United States, will equalize production and consumption in that country, and leave it unable to furnish the supplies on which Britain has hitherto so largely depended. Speaking to a Yorkshire audience not long since, Sir Lyon Playfair suggested twenty years hence as the probable period to the time when England could expect to draw wheat supplies from the United States, after which she would have to depend on Canada, India, and other countries chiefly within the Empire. On the same question Mr. Bryce, in speaking of the United States, says: 'High economic authorities pronounce that the beginnings of this time of pressure lie not more than thirty years ahead. Nearly all the best arable land of the West is already occupied, so that the second and third best will soon begin to be cultivated; while the exhaustion already complained of in farms which have been under the plough for three or four decades will be increasingly felt.' Like opinions have been expressed by American writers. Whatever may be thought about the precise point of time, the tendency is manifest. Within a measurable time the Empire will, by the natural progress of events, mainly supply its own markets with wheat, and, it may be added, with its second most important article of consumption {152} meat. The argument which I have used in another place, pointing to the advantage and greater security for both producer and consumer, of having so far as possible the areas which furnish the raw material of manufacture under the protection of the national flag, applies with equal, if not greater force, to food supply.

[1] 'Mob violence and many forms of injustice, made life almost intolerable for them in their homes, and emigration to British territory took place on a scale which has been hardly paralleled since the Huguenots. It has been estimated, apparently on good authority, that in the two provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick alone, the Loyalist emigrants and their families amounted to not less than 35,000 persons, and the total number of refugees cannot have been much less than 100,000.--Jones' 'History of New York,' ii. 259, 268, 500, 509. An American authority quoted by Mr. Lecky.

[2] Since writing the above I have found the case thus put from the United States point of view in the _North American Review_ for August, 1890:--'The exhaustion of the forests of Maine, the disappearance of the forests in the Saginaw valley, and the utter disregard for the future by which the policy of protection has stimulated the policy of destruction, will in a quarter of a century result in denuding vast areas of the United States of the timber supply available within reasonable reach of its great points of demand. All the industries dependent upon timber, if they are to grow in the next twenty years, will need new resources for the supply of the raw material. Whence can these be obtained except from the portion of the continent outside of the United States? ...When one recalls the vast stretches of treeless prairies within the United States, in which shelter must be provided, the necessities and exhaustion of rainless regions resulting from the destruction of forests, and the rapid growth of vast cities on the lakes and plains, and also the fact that from the northern part of the continent above is a supply of timber certain for all future time, the necessity for the extension of commerce so as to include these areas is apparent. ...

'The exhaustion of wheat lands is a consideration of the most vital importance in relation to the future supply of the food of this continent. It is a startling fact, not yet fully realized by the people of this country, that at the present rate of procedure the United States may be a large importer of breadstuffs. The growth of population is so rapid, the exhaustion of arable land so constant, that without new and cultivable territory the sources for the supply of food products will soon be below the local demand. ... When it is recalled that the best wheat-producing region of the world is found just north of the Minnesota line, and that in the new provinces and territories of the Canadian north-west there is a possible wheat-supply for all time, it will be seen how important has been the provision of nature for the food of mankind.'

And again:-' Cheap food for New England is the necessity of the hour in that region. ... In the Maritime Provinces are abundant sources of food supply. No other country in the world can produce potatoes, apples, oats, hay, poultry, dairy produce, and, still more important, the finest fish food, equal to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. ... In the unlimited supply of cheap raw material from Canada, in the unrestricted output of fish and food products, and the constant employment of cheap labour from the north, the new hope of New England may be found. Without these her manufacturing prospects are gloomy indeed.'

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