desert but a series of mountain-ranges still more formidable. Each of the separate territories is by nature connected commercially with an adjacent portion of the Union: Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with New England; Quebec and Ontario with the States to the south of them, Ontario drawing her fuel from Pennsylvania; Manitoba with Minnesota, from which she is divided merely by a diplomatic line; British Columbia with California. The natural routes between the four territories lie not over Canadian but over American ground, and commerce will follow the natural not the political routes. On the other hand, the action of the Boston merchants shows that the identity of commercial interest and the evils of commercial severance are felt by the United States as well as by Canada. The people of the United States want Canadian lumber, they want the trade with the Maritime Provinces, they want the free and secure use of the St. Lawrence. The American fishermen want free access to the Canadian fisheries, as much as the people of the Maritime Provinces want admission to the coasting trade of the United States.

Herculean efforts have been made, not by the Canadian people, properly speaking, but by Canadian statesmen, acting for political purposes, and in concert with English imperialism, to reverse the order of nature, to sever Canada commercially from her continent, and to bind her economically to England, to the dependencies of England, even those on the other side of the globe, and to every portion of the world except the dreaded republic. An imperial Zollverein has been projected; negotiations for commercial treaties have been opened with European nations; an editorial appeared some time ago in the Toronto "Globe" proclaiming the discovery of a market in Australia, which would more than compensate the loss of these at our own door. At the same time a series of gigantic railway enterprises has been undertaken, for the purpose of connecting the four separate territories by lines running entirely within British territory, so as to avoid any partnership in highways with the American Republic, and beyond the reach of the enemy in that war between Canada and the United States, a belief in which, as an event of the future, is one of our imperial institutions. The result, while it has been injurious to the interests of the United States, has not been satisfactory to the Canadian people. The negotiations for commercial treaties have failed, as it was likely they would, when opened by a dependency without full treaty-making powers. The first of the politico-military railways, the Intercolonial, uniting

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the maritime provinces with old Canada, has cost thirty-six millions in its construction, is run at a heavy annual cost to the Government, and is likely to be less useful and more of a burden than ever when the natural route is opened, as it soon will be, through the State of Maine. From the immense expenditure involved in the operation of extending the politico-military system of railways westward, under the name of the Canadian Pacific, the less adventurous portion of the community, including apparently Sir Francis Hincks himself, is beginning to recoil. The leader of the opposition in the Dominion Parliament moved, the other day, to postpone the construction of a portion of the railway within the territory of British Columbia. He was defeated by a strict party vote, the Government commanding a large majority. But there is little doubt that in caucus, to keep the representatives of Quebec and the eastern provinces under the standard, the Government had to give assurances of caution and delay. More than this, the Minister of Railways, in his speech, allowed it to be plainly seen, by a significant omission, that the construction of the projected line to the north of Lake Superior, through a country desperately difficult, was was not to be put under contract, and that the Government would content itself with the natural route, which runs to the south of the lake through American territory between Duluth and Sault Ste. Marie. This is a virtual abandonment (perhaps it would be officially called a postponement) of the whole project, so far as its military and political objects are concerned, since there can be no military or political continuity if the line, in a part of its course, and that the part nearest to Canada, runs over foreign ground. The nearest link in the projected chain is missing. The territories which it is proposed to weld into a united community are not even made conterminous.

The expenditure entailed by that part of the separatist policy which consists in constructing a vast system of political railways, in defiance of the greatest natural obstacles, within Canadian territory, fatally conflicts with the other object, of tightening the commercial bond with England, because it renders necessary an increased taxation and the imposition of higher duties on British goods.

For my own part, I am a member of the Cobden Club, and a believer in its motto, "free trade, peace, good-will among nations." But my belief is in the motto as a whole. My conviction is that, without peace and good-will among nations, the renunciation of aggranVOL. CXXXI.-NO. 284.

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dizement, and the reduction of armaments, there can be no free trade. Canada has a tariff, the United States have a tariff, England has a tariff-every nation has a tariff. Everywhere the tariffs are violations of free trade, and everywhere they will be necessary till ambition takes its departure and leaves the world at peace.

I have said that Sir Francis Hincks is of the number of those whom the present aspect of Canadian finance disquiets. If to say agitating things is to be an agitator, he will hardly escape the name. In a recent article in his Montreal "Journal of Commerce," reviewing the financial position, he described Canada as "piling up annually a gigantic debt," as "drifting into bankruptcy," as being hurried "to a day of reckoning" which assuredly could not be far distant. He depicted the situation of the Province of Quebec as equally bad with that of the Dominion. The main cause of all this, he distinctly intimated, was the expenditure on "public works"; that is to say, on the politico-military railways, the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pacific, as well as on canals, the construction of which is partly dictated by similar views. The cut-throat system, instead of the system of amicable partnership, applied to railways, canals, and commercial relations generally, is in fact the principal source of the evil, and the admission is most significant when it comes from Sir Francis Hincks, who, as a Canadian Tory Minister, has been personally responsible for the course which has been pursued.

The Canadian people, apart from any wish for political change, are disquieted, as well they may be, by the financial results of a policy which adds the ruinous expenditure of a chimerical imperialism to the commercial atrophy caused by the severance of Canada from her own continent and her natural markets. In 1878 they voted out the "Grit" Government, of which the head was Mr. Mackenzie, because it declared its inability to do anything for the improvement of the commercial situation; and they voted in Sir John Macdonald, who undertook to make an attempt. The "national policy" had been pressed upon them by protectionists as a panacea, and, without knowing very clearly what it meant, they determined to give it a trial. This was the real meaning of the election of September, 1878, so far as the popular feeling was concerned.

When from the people the "national policy" passed into the hands of the politicians, for practical application in the form of a tariff, they gave it the mold of their own political sentiments, which are imperialist, and produced a plan which they are able to repre

sent to England as anti-American, though it at the same time increases the duties on British goods. But already the people are dissatisfied, in the Eastern provinces at least; so much so, as to make it highly probable that, if a general election were now to be held, the result of the last would be reversed. A policy framed on the principle of severance, though the work of able hands, has failed, as it will always fail, to touch the real source of the evil.

Its failure does not lessen the significance of the vote of September, 1878. On that occasion people, in a country where political feeling is very strong, deserted by thousands the standard of their party, and broke through the party lines under the cover of the ballot, to vote for that which they hoped would promote their material welfare. Let a similar hope once more present itself, and they will do the same thing again.

On the whole, from the manifestations of dissatisfaction with the present state of things on both sides, it may be safely predicted that Canadian and American statesmen will soon be in conference on the subject of commercial relations; perhaps the fisheries dispute, which is always recurring in some form, may bring this question also to a head. Two plans will present themselves for consideration-commercial union and a partial reciprocity treaty like the last. The objections to a partial reciprocity treaty are, in the first place, that it would not rid us of the customs line; in the second place, that it would be extremely difficult to render the scheme fair to all interests; in the third place, that it could hardly fail to make Canada an entrepot for European contraband, and thus to give rise to disputes which would be fatal to its own existence; in the fourth place, that as the offspring of a dominant party or a particular national mood, it would be always in danger, through a loss of power by the party, or a change of the national mood, of being overthrown as the last was, with all the industries built upon it. A commercial union would be permanent, and would, in addition to its other advantages, give perfectly free circulation to capital and commercial life. No doubt difficulties would attend it, because it would involve an equalization of tariffs; but the difference between the tariffs has already been greatly reduced. It is to be hoped that commercial union will receive the first consideration: if it proves impracticable, we must fall back on a reciprocity treaty, which in itself would be a gain.

Revolutions are sometimes necessary, but they are always evils. No revolution could be more necessary than that which released the

New World from bondage to the British aristocracy, and set it at liberty to work out its own destinies. Yet its blessings were dearly purchased. On England it brought loss, shame, and estrangement from a large portion of her race; on the French monarchy it brought bankruptcy, which, if peace had continued, Turgot's policy might have averted, and as the consequence of bankruptcy the most frightful catastrophe in history. Nor did the people of the United States, though victorious, come forth unscathed. The usual effects of civil war were produced on their political character. Their republic was launched with a revolutionary bias the opposite of which was to be desired, and a permanent ascendancy was given to a revolutionary sentiment, which in course of time generated the rebellion of the Southern States, whose principle of resistance to a government which they did not like had been often formulated by Northern lips. We have another evil legacy of the Revolution in the relations between Canada and the United States. In ordinary cases the vanquished party in a revolution remains in the country, and, when the storm of political passion has subsided, blends again with the victors. In the case of the American Revolution the vanquished party was driven into exile by acts of attainder and confiscation. It colonized British Canada, and there perpetuated, in the form of a separate group of settlements, dividing the northern section of the continent from the rest, the antagonism of the civil war. Had the English revolutionists of 1688 confiscated the estates of their opponents, and driven all the Jacobites into Scotland, they would have done their island the same mischief which was done to this continent by the treatment of the defeated Tories after the Revolution.

Enthusiastic attachment to the crown for which they had suffered, and which had given them their new abode, was a natural and honorable sentiment on the part of the loyalists settled in Canada. It carried with it a feeling of antagonism to the American Republic, which was increased by the calamitous war of 1812. Scarcely had the enmity begun to slumber, when it was revived by the events of 1837, though the party in Canada with which the people of the United States had displayed their sympathy, and which consisted mainly of a later set of immigrants, while it was defeated on the field of battle, triumphed in the political conflict and achieved responsible government. Disputes about boundaries and fisheries added, from time to time, fresh drops to the cup of bitterness; and a violent access of mutual ill-feeling was brought