themselves be sufficient to raise up that national spirit which appears to be deficient. If Canada is to remain with us, we must try other means also to make the bonds of union closer, and render her more an integral part of our empire than she now is.

She must be allowed to feel through all her nerves and fibres that she has a share in our national life, that she contributes in some way to the framing of our imperial policy, and that she participates fully in our greatness and glory.

If, on the other hand, she is left to be only an outlying province, with no political views beyond those of her provincial Government, and little to remind her of England beyond the fact of an English satrap presiding over her councils, she will almost certainly remain unimbued with our higher national life, and without aspiration for greater achievement. Under these circumstances her allegiance will not be worth many years' purchase. Year by year her interests would be found drifting away from ours, and before very long her affections would assuredly follow her interests; and we would have the mortification of seeing our premier colony, which from first to last has cost us so much in blood and treasure, severed from our empire, and finally merged in the United States Confederation.

So far as Dominion interests in the wider future are concerned, it would probably conduce more to her greatness and power not so to merge herself. There is surely abundant room on that huge continent for two great nations side by side to wage an honourable rivalry in subduing the forces of Nature to the needs and uses of man; and Canada would probably receive more aid in her life-struggle from Great Britain than she could expect from the United States. But if we fail to make her more fully a part of ourselves, her destiny will drive her to become a part of them; for the present middle course is not the medial line that proverbially leads to safety, but is one leading to danger, and from which it is hardly reasonable to expect anything else. It cannot be too strongly urged that for Canada there is no standing still; nay even to continue to loiter as she now does seems impossible.

If we fail to win her affections and to bind her in closer alliance with us, she will assuredly drift over to our rivals, and certainly she will be a strength to them, whatever she may have been to us. So far, we have not taken advantage of her immense resources as we might have done, and as it was, both to ourselves and to her, our duty to do. The boundless outlet of the West has been to the States not only an incentive to enterprise and a stimulus to their national life, but it has solved for them some of those social problems which perplex us, and which our limited space and crowded population almost preclude our solving at home. Yet all the time we have had the means of solution, in those vast transatlantic territories of ours, but have taken small pains to learn their value or turn them to profitable account either for ourselves or for our colonists. The blame for this apathy is not wholly ours, nor is it

wholly theirs; both share it, and both have suffered for it. Let us hope that, both for them and for us, the time is not yet too late, and that by a closer union we may still retrieve something of lost time and wasted opportunity.

It remains to be considered by what means a closer union can be brought about with Canada, so as to quicken her national life, stimulate her energies, vivify her trade, people her solitudes, and avert the dangers of secession or disruption. And here I must admit that this branch of my subject is one of such extreme difficulty, that any hints or suggestions thrown out may, by many, be considered Quixotic and impracticable. Possibly on investigation they may turn out to be so, and in the meantime I wish to guard myself against being supposed to express any formed or decided opinion in their favour. Before these hints or suggestions are entitled to claim full adhesion from any one, they require more searching inquiry and more patient thinking out than probably any one has yet given them.

The question now to be propounded is, By what mutual and reasonable concessions can we fairly hope that the political life of the Dominion may become more thoroughly English, and that its interests and sympathies may be more fully identified with those of the mother-country?

It has already been suggested that, on the one hand, the Dominion should open its ports to British trade; and that, on the other, Great Britain should aid in constructing the Pacific Railway.

Suppose, in addition, that we should take over the Dominion debt and incorporate it with our own? The old debt amounts to about thirty-two millions, and building the railway might add twelve or possibly fifteen. The old being all at four, five, and six per cent., could be paid off and be re-borrowed at a lower rate of interest than is now paid, and the new could be got, under our guarantee, cheaper than with only theirs.

Canada could then be called upon to pay her quota of Imperial

taxation.

Taxation implies representation, and she would then be fairly entitled to have representatives in the Imperial Parliament, and to have a reasonable number of seats in both Houses.

These, no doubt, are changes of a somewhat sweeping character, not to be lightly entered upon, and requiring great courage in any responsible Minister who might propose them. Would British statesmen and politicians be ready to admit colonial rivalry for Parliamentary honours and for Ministerial places? Would they consent to cut down a certain number of home constituencies to make room for colonial? And what of the House of Lords? Would it be ready to welcome within its august portals a reasonable number of colonial peers, whether life or hereditary ?

Neither as yet have we the means of judging whether, even supposing we were ourselves ready to concede our share of the changes,

Canada is quite ready to concede hers. The opening of her ports implies a total change in her mode of raising revenue for the general purposes of the Dominion. So far as not raised from intoxicants, excise, or stamps, it would have to be raised by direct taxation, and every one knows that to disburse in that way is the most unpleasant of all the ways of doing an unpleasant thing. To pay direct taxes cheerfully, implies an intelligent appreciation of the advantage of buying untaxed commodities, which Canada, to judge from her present tariff, can hardly have reached.

She has, however, abundant reason to be tired of her present system, which, like all protective tariffs, means in practice a constantly increasing scale of duties without a corresponding increase of revenue. Apart from the facts that increased cost checks consumption, and that increased duties promote contraband, there is also the fact that, so far as home manufactures are encouraged by protection, goods are made, and the people pay extreme prices for them, without one penny of those enhanced prices accruing to the revenue. Thus her imports have been diminishing for at least four years, and last year they reached the lowest point of any for nine years back; and, if this goes on, some change of system will become absolutely necessary.

Probably Canada might endeavour to stipulate, as a condition of opening her ports or greatly reducing her tariff on our goods, that we should put a duty on all other breadstuffs than hers, but that proposal could not be entertained even for a moment.

We have travelled too long and too far on the paths of free trade to think of acceding to a step so retrograde. In asking her to open her ports to us, we would not be so untrue to our principles as to stipulate for exclusive privileges if she preferred to make them general, and as certainly we would not confer exclusive privileges on her. It is free trade we invite her to follow us in, not that bastard imitation of it called reciprocity.

The payment of her quota of imperial taxation might also be a stumbling-block, but it would clearly be a necessary condition of our taking over her debt, and of our allowing her a voice in our Imperial policy, and a share in our Imperial administration. If the colonies complain, as they sometimes do, that they are liable to have their ports and cities bombarded, and their lands invaded and desolated, through our engaging in some war with which they had nothing to do, and in the policy of which they had no say, the reply, that they have been kept free from all contributions to Imperial taxation, seems a complete and sufficient one. If they are to share the honours and the policy, they must share also the burden; and, so far, we have no knowledge that the Dominion is willing to do this.

Neither do we know whether her statesmen have political aspirations tending in the direction of seats in our Parliament, or of peerages, baronetcies, and of possible places in the Imperial Government. These

desires have never been cultivated or encouraged in our colonies, and those statesmen in the Dominion whose ability marks them as worthy of ranking for such honours, possibly prefer the untitled simplicity of the neighbouring Republic.

On all the points of the scheme, thus only slightly outlined, much information is needed, and much careful thought and discussion, to bring it into practical shape; but the subject is a pressing one, and will not brook great delay. In the political horizon of the Dominion already the clouds are gathering that portend a storm, and it seems almost certain that the time is not far off, and indeed it may come sooner than most men think, when British statesmen will have to elect whether Great Britain is to keep or to lose Canada; and the policy adopted in that crisis will deeply affect the future welfare, not only of the mother country, but of her dependency also.

All who have these interests at heart will earnestly hope, therefore, that the statesmen of both Parliaments may appreciate the momentous issues that are before them, and that, knowing they hold in their hands the destinies of a great Empire, they may so guide their counsels as to secure cordial and lasting union, and not, either through apathy or unwisdom, allow us to drift any farther on the way toward a second disruption of our American colonies.

GEORGE ANDERSON.

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.

A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY.

A

vit.

T the present day it is definitively proved that there was not in the mysteries of Eleusis, any more than in the other mysteries of Greece, any dogmatic teaching; that the proceedings in them were not by way of a communication, made directly by the hierophantés to the mystés, of formal doctrinal beliefs different from the public religion and superior to it. There were, on the nights of the initiations, rites and representations of a symbolic nature, intended to awaken religious impressions in the souls of the initiated; to make them penetrate further into the knowledge of divine things, and into the inner meaning of the myths presented for adoration; and, above all, to apply to them the merits of the vicissitudes in the history of the gods by throwing down the barrier between man and the divinity. But everywhere, at Eleusis as well as at Samothrakê and in the other mysteries, the teaching remained closely attached to the ceremonies themselves, and it resulted immediately therefrom for those who could understand them. It did not form a distinct part intended to supply the solution of an enigma which had long been paraded before the eyes.

*

"Aristotelês," says Synesios, "is of opinion that the initiated learned nothing precisely, but that they received impressions, that they were put into a certain frame of mind for which they had been prepared." Plutarchos, again, expresses himself thus: "I listened to these things with simplicity, as in the ceremonies of initiation, which do not admit of any demonstration or any conviction brought about by reasoning." We must quote yet another passage, in which Galênos,‡ contrasting the observation of Nature with the contemplation of the mysteries, characterizes the mode of instruction and the range of the latter: "Give + De Defect. Orac., 22.

* Orat., p. 48, ed. Petan.

De Us. Part., vii. 14.