the continent; each would have had its standing army and its standing feuds; and we, too, in Canada, were it only in self-defence, must have been compelled to arm. I for one cannot look back on the history of the American Republic without feeling that all this would have been a world-wide misfortune. How can we ever forget that the United States territory has, for nearly a century, been an ever-open asylum for the poor and persecuted from every land? Millions have fled from suffering and destitution in every corner of Europe to find happy homes and overflowing prosperity in the Republic. Is there a human being could rejoice that all this should be ended?”

That was the view of the soundest and best-informed Canadian public opinion in Lincoln's own day. The years that have intervened have confirmed that opinion. Canadians of to-day rise up and bless the name of Abraham Lincoln, because by him it was determined that the Canadian Dominion, now stretching from ocean to ocean, would have to do on this continent not with two Republics, as seemed inevitable, not with four as seemed possible, but with one great Nation, along the four thousand miles of international boundary, and holding sovereign sway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.

For that great fact in our international relationships we in Canada give thanks with you on this Lincoln Centennial day. All that Lincoln did in the cause of human freedom and guarding the sacredness of human rights, he did for us as for you. And his own great life is our inheritance as well as yours. Under his strong hand democracy in the United States survived the utmost strain, and because of that, we in Canada are being heartened in our great task of laying the foundations and erecting the structure of another democracy on the north half of this continent, in which all men shall be born free and equal, and where government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall have another chance.

The struggle of democracy in the United States could not but be significant for Britain. Democracy was the organizing struggle of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Its progress was marked by the great monuments of civil and religious liberty, from the Magna Charta of King John to the Reform Bill of Queen Victoria. When your Civil War broke out, the

friends and the enemies of democracy in Britain took sides. The aristocracy of England and the distinctive institutions of aristocracy in State and in Church were on the side of the South. The great masses of the people were for the cause of the North. The Government of the day was Liberal, and, notwithstanding what Justin McCarthy calls "Lord Palmerston's heedless, unthinking way," was really in sympathy with the Northern side.

This division of opinion in England was not generally understood in the United States at the time, and is sometimes misrepresented even yet. It was a perfectly natural situation. Nothing could be more natural than that the territorial aristocracy of England should take sides with its own offspring, the aristocracy of Virginia, that had transplanted to America the same social and ecclesiastical institutionsthe great family estate and the established Church-and had adopted the same cavalier ideals of life that distinguished the aristocratic classes in England for centuries. That natural affinity was made to yield pronounced sympathy by the representatives of the Confederacy, who cultivated the friendship of English aristocrats for the "gentlemen" of the South as against the "merchants and mechanics and manufacturers" of the North.

The commercial aristocracy of England was also favorable to the Confederacy; not that it cared for the men of the South or for secession, or for slavery, but because of its dependence on "King Cotton." When the North blockaded the ports of the Southern States, the entire supply of raw cotton for the mills was cut off, and that greatest of all of England's industries was utterly paralyzed. Thousands of mills were closed. The cotton from India could not be worked in the English mills. Men saw their entire fortunes swept, away because of the interference of the North with the export trade of the South. What wonder if the commercial aristocrats, like the aristocrats of blood, were out of sympa thy with the Northern cause?

But the people of England, the great common people,. were not with the aristocracy. Their leaders and spokesmen,

were not the bishops of the Church, or the lords of the manors, or newspapers like the Times. Once the people knew that the real issue was slavery, their old-time and undying love of liberty asserted itself, and to a man they stood for the Union. The true leaders of the people were statesmen like Cobden and Bright-Gladstone had not yet shaken himself free from the entanglements of class-privilege in which he was bornand scholars like John Stuart Mill and Goldwin Smith and the most eminent preachers in the Free Churches of both England and Scotland. George Brown went over from Canada in 1862 and spent more than six months in a campaign in all sections of the United Kingdom. His influence was powerful, not only with the masses of the people, but also with the great Liberal leaders then in control in Parliament.

Let the people of the United States who rejoice to-day in Lincoln's victory never forget how much they owe to the common people of England for the final and complete triumph of Lincoln's cause. It was by no turn of eye, or wave of hand, that your kith beyond the sea joined in your issue in the conflict. Within thirty miles round about Manchester, two and a half millions suffered for your cause. The spindles and looms of Lancashire and the other cotton-mill counties were silent, and the operatives day after day were within sight of starvation. They had no work because the cotton was unshipped in the ports of the South. They and their families were without bread. But not one of them made complaint. One cry, and there might have been a riot. One riot, and public opinion might have been swung irresistibly to the side of the aristocracy, and either have stampeded the Government or driven it from office. A change of Government would have meant Britain's interference to raise the cotton blockade. And, with France eager for Britain to lead the way, the appearance of the British navy before the blockaded ports of the South at that crisis-time in the fortunes of the North would have meant-what?

And why did the people of England care so much for the success of the Union? It was because they understood the issue of the struggle to be life or death for human rights.

The democracy of Britain, that had won its own place against the heavy odds of entrenched power and privilege, was eagerly, vitally interested in the struggle of government by the people in America. They knew what was involved not for America alone, but for Britain as well. It was the life-struggle of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The common people of England had long heard the scoffs of the aristocracy against popular self-government. In those days, before the great Reform Bill of 1866, they heard the enemies of the people's rights sneer at your free Republic. They knew how much would be lost not for you alone, but for them and for the Anglo-Saxon world, were this great experiment of democracy in America to fail. That it should not fail they gladly endured suffering and loss and hunger rather than give occasion for their own Government and the European powers to interfere against the Union. In ways he knew not of, Lincoln's triumph heartened Anglo-Saxon democracy and brought one stage nearer the enfranchisement of the common people.

Think for a moment of the world-significance of Lincoln. Think what his life meant for the long, dark struggle of the people of Europe against tyranny and oppression. All down the century they had been coming by thousands from under the despotic systems of the Old World to find freedom and opportunity on this new continent. From France, from Austria, from Prussia, from Italy, from Russia, from Turkey, they came. Some of them were refugees from political tyrants. Some of them sought freedom to worship God. Here they found an open door. They learned the new language of liberty. They sent back to their suffering brethren in Europe great words of cheer from the land of the free. Brave ones among them went back, and, in secret, sowed the seeds of democracy even in the valleys of despotism. Had Lincoln failed, had the Union been destroyed, had the Republic proved unequal to the strain and burden of maintaining free rights for a free people, how the tyrant-monarchs of Europe would have laughed! How the forerunners of European liberty would have been staggered! On the

success or the frustration of Lincoln's task the fate of democracy in Europe was trembling in the balance. But Lincoln did not fail. His venture for Union and Liberty triumphed triumphed gloriously. The reflex of that triumph meant new hope for government of the people, by the people, for the people, in Germany, in Russia, even in Turkey itself. A handful of seed on the tops of the mountains, and lo! the fruit thereof shakes like Lebanon.

And not Europe alone, but Asia as well. In our day the Orient, mysterious, vast, potential, heaves into sight above the skyline. It means something for this Republic this very day that Lincoln stood for the Union, and for supremacy of national integrity over local interests. It means something for world-peace that this Republic presents a united front to the Pacific, behind it a united nation, the Stars and Stripes over every State, and to the North the Union Jack. It means much for the world-brotherhood that this Republie has not only discovered its own power, but is learning its own duty, taking its large share of the great human burden, and playing its part for peace and good-will to the world.

And this—this service to democracy in America, to AngloSaxon civilization, to the peace and progress of the worldis what I mean by the Significance of Lincoln.

What was it in this man that gave his life so great significance ? What was his secret? How came he to speak with such authority? Questions such as these have been asked by every serious student of Lincoln's career. But no answer, no final answer, has been given.

Lincoln's life does not lend itself to the ordinary processes of analysis and appreciation. A catalogue of his qualities does not explain his life. Other men even among his associates were gifted beyond him in cultured intellect and eloquence of speech. Other men touched life at a score of points where he touched it at one. The horizons of life and of history for other men were wide where for him they were near. The study of heredity does not explain Lincoln, and his environment offers no clue. Blood may tell, and