tem of party government, forecast and freedom of speech alike belong generally to those who are not engaged in public life.

The political destiny of Canada is here considered by itself, apart from that of any other portion of the motley and widely scattered" Empire." This surely is the rational course. Not to speak of India and the military dependencies, such as Malta and Gibraltar, which have absolutely nothing in common with the North American colonies (India not even the titular form of government, since its sovereign has been made an empress), who can believe that the future of Canada, of South Africa, of Australia, of the West Indies, and of Mauritius will be the same? Who can believe that the mixed French and English population of Canada, the mixed Dutch and English population of the Cape, the negro population of Jamaica, the French and Indian population of Mauritius, the English and Chinese population of Australia, are going to run for ever the same political course? Who can believe that the moulding influences will be the same in arctic continents or in tropical islands as in countries lying within the temperate zone? Among the colonies, those, perhaps, which most nearly resemble each other in political character and circumstances are Canada and Australia; yet the elements of the population are very different; and still more different are the external relations of Australia, with no other power near her, from those of Canada, not only conterminous with the United States, but interlaced with them, so that at present the road of the Governor-General of Canada, when he visits his Pacific province, lies through the territory of the American republic. Is it possible to suppose that the slender filament which connects each of these colonies with Downing Street is the thread of a common destiny?

In studying Canadian politics, and in attempting to cast the political horoscope of Canada, the first thing to be remembered, though official optimism is apt to overlook it, is that Canada was a colony not of England but of France, and that between the British of Ontario and the British of Nova Scotia and New Bruns wick are interposed, in solid and unyielding mass, above a milion of unassimilated

and politically antagonistic Frenchmen. French Canada is a relic of the historical past preserved by isolation, as Siberian mammoths are preserved in ice. It is a fragment of the France before the Revolution, less the monarchy and the aristocracy; for the feeble parody of French feudalism in America ended with the abolition of the seigniories, which may be regarded as the final renunciation of feudal ideas and institutions by society in the New World. The French Canadians are an unprogressive, religious, submissive, courteous, and, though poor, not unhappy people. They would make excellent factory hands if Canada had a market for her manufactures; and, perhaps, it is as much due to the climate as to their lack of intelligent industry that they have a very indifferent reputation as farmers. They are 'governed by the priest, with the occasional assistance of the notary; and the Roman Catholic Church may be said to be still established in the province, every Roman Catholic being bound to pay tithes and other ecclesiastical imposts, though the Protestant minority are exempt. The Church is immensely rich, and her wealth is always growing, so that the economical element which mingled with the religious causes of the Reformation may one day have its counterpart in Quebec. The French Canadians, as we have said, retain their exclusive national character. So far from being absorbed by the British population, or Anglicised by contact with it, they have absorbed and Gallicised the fragments of British population which chance has thrown among them; and the children of Highland regiments disbanded in Quebec have become thorough Frenchmen, and prefixed Jean Baptiste to their Highland names. For his own Canada the Frenchman of Quebec has something of a patriotic feeling; for France he has filial affection enough to make his heart beat violently for her during a Franco-German war; for England, it may be safely said, he has no feeling whatever. It is true that he fought against the American invaders in the revolutionary war, and again in 1812; but then he was animated by his ancient hostility to the Puritans of New England, in the factories of whose descendants he now freely seeks employment. Whether he would enthusiastically take up arms

for England against the Americans at present, the British War Office, after the experience of the two Fenian raids, can no doubt tell. With Upper Canada, the land of Scotch Presbyterians, Irish Orangemen, and ultra-British sentiment, French Canada, during the union of the two provinces, led an uneasy life; and she accepted confederation, on terms which leave her nationality untouched, rather as a severance of her special wedlock with her unloved consort than as a measure of North American union. The unabated antagonism between the two races and the two religions was plainly manifested on the occasion of the conflict between the French half-breeds and the British immigrants in Manitoba, which presented a faint parallel to the conflict between the advanced posts of slavery and anti-slavery in Kansas on the eve of the civil war; Quebec openly sympathizing with Riel and his fellow-insurgents, while Ontario was on fire to avenge the death of Scott. Sir George Cartier might call himself an Englishman speaking French; but his calling himself so did not make him so; much less did it extend the character from a political manager, treading the path of ambition with British colleagues, to the mass of his unsophisticated compatriots. The priests hitherto have put their interests into the hands of a political leader, such as Sir George himself, in the same way in which the Irish priests used to put their interests into the hands of O'Connell; and this leader has made the best terms he could for them and for himself at Ottawa. Nor has it been difficult to make good terms, since both the political parties bid emulously for the Catholic vote, and, by their interested subserviency to those who wield it, render it impossible for a Liberal Catholic party, or a Liberal party of any kind, to make head against priestly influence in Quebec. By preference the priests, as reactionists, have allied themselves with the Tory party in the British provinces, and Canada has long witnessed the singular spectacle, witnessed for the first time in England at the last general election, of Roman Catholics and Orangemen marching together to the poll. Fear of contact with an active-minded democracy, and of possible peril to their overweening wealth, has also led the priesthood to shrink from Annexation, though

they have not been able to prevent their people from going over the line for better wages, and bringing back with them a certain republican leaven of political and ecclesiastical unrest, which in the end may, perhaps, lead to the verification of Lord Elgin's remark, that it would be easier to make the French Canadians Americans than to make them English. Hitherto, however, French Canada has retained, among other heirlooms of the Ancien Régime, the old Gallican Church, the Church of Louis XIV. and of Bossuet, national, quiet, unaggressive, capable of living always on sufficiently good terms with the State. But now the scene is changed. Even to French Canada, the most secluded nook of the Catholic world, Ultramontanism has penetrated, with the Jesuit in its van. There is a struggle for ascendency between the Jesuits and the Gallicans, the citadel of the Gallicans being the Sulpician seminary, vast and enormously wealthy, which rises over Montreal. The Jesuit has the forces of the hour on his side; he gains the day; the bishops fall under his influence and take his part against the Sulpicians; the Guibord case marks, distinctly though farcically, the triumph of his principles; and it is by no means certain that he, a cosmopolitan power playing a great game, will cling to Canadian isolation, and that he will not prefer a junction with his main army in the United States. Assuredly his choice will not be determined by loyalty to England. At all events, his aggressive policy has begun to raise questions calculated to excite the Protestants of the British provinces, which the politicians, with all their arts, will hardly be able to smother, and which will probably put an end to the long torpor of Quebec. The New Brunswick School case points to education as a subject which can scarcely fail soon to give birth to a cause of war.

Besides the French, there are in Canada, as we believe we have good authority for saying, about four hundred thousand Irish, whose political sentiments are generally identical with those of the Irish in the mother country, as any reader of their favorite journals will perceive. Thus, without reckoning a considerable German settlement in Ontario, which by its unimpaired nationality in the heart of the British population attests the weak

ness of the assimilating forces in Canada compared with those in the United States, or the Americans, who, though not numerous, are influential in the commercial centres, we have at once to deduct one million four hundred thousand from a total population of less than four millions in order to reduce to reality the pictures of universal devotion to England and English interests which are presented by the speeches of official persons or of persons professing to know Canada, but deriving their idea of her from the same source.

Confederation, so far, has done nothing to fuse the races, and very little even to unite the provinces. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, besides being cut off from Ontario by French Canada, have interests of their own, separate, and in some degree divergent, from those of Ontario, New Brunswick especially being drawn by her commercial interests towards New England. The representatives of each of the smaller provinces form a separate group at Ottawa, giving or withholding their support to a great extent from provincial considerations. Each of the two political parties has its base in Ontario, which is the field of the decisive battles; and they can hardly be said to extend to the maritime provinces, much less to Manitoba or to British Columbia. When the Ontarian parties are evenly balanced the smaller provinces turn the scale, and Ontarian leaders are always buying them with "better terms," that is, alterations of the pecuniary arrangements of confederation in their favor, and other inducements, at the sacrifice, of course, of the general interests of the Confederation. From the composition of a cabinet to the composition of a rifle team sectionalism is the rule. Confederation has secured free trade between the provinces; what other good it has done it would not be easy to say. Whether it has increased the military strength of Canada is a question for the answer to which we must appeal once more to the British War Office. Canadians have shown, on more than one memorable occasion, that in military spirit they are not wanting; but they cannot be goaded into wasting their hardly-earned money on preparations for a defence which would be hopeless against an invader who will never come.

Politically, the proper province of a federal government is the management of external relations, while domestic legislation is the province of the several states. But a dependency has no external relations; Canada has not even, like South Africa, a Native question, her Indians being perfectly harmless; and consequently the chief duty of a federal government in Canada is to keep itself in existence by the ordinary agencies of party, a duty which it discharges with a vengeance. English statesmen bent on extending to all the colonies what they assume to be the benefits of confederation, should study the Canadian specimen, if possible, on the spot. They will learn, first, that while a spontaneous confederation, such as groups of states have formed under the pressure of a common danger, develops mainly the principles of union, a confederation brought about by external influence is apt to develop the principles of antagonism in at least an equal degree; and, secondly, that parliamentary government in a dependency is, to a lamentable extent, government by faction and corruption, and that by superadding federal to provincial government the extent and virulence of those maladies are seriously increased. If an appeal is made to the success of confederation in Switzerland, the answer is that Switzerland is not a dependency but a nation.

It is of Canada alone that we here speak, and we speak only of her political destiny. The ties of blood, of language, of historical association, and of general sympathy which bind the British portion of the Canadian people to England, are not dependent on the political connection, nor is it likely that they would be at all weakened by its severance. In the United States there are millions of Irish exiles, with the wrongs of Ireland in their hearts, and the whole nation retains the memories of the revolutionary war, of the war of 1812, and of the conduct of the British aristocracy towards the United States during the rebellion of the South

conduct which it is difficult to forgive, and which it would be folly to forget. Yet to those who have lived among the Americans it will not seem extravagant to say that the feelings of an AngloAmerican towards his mother country are really at least as warm as those of the

natives of dependencies, and at least as likely to be manifested by practical assistance in the hour of need. A reference to the history of the opposition made to the war of 1812 will suffice at least to bring this opinion within the pale cf credibility.

The great forces prevail. They prevail at last, however numerous and apparently strong the secondary forces opposed to them may be. They prevailed at last in the case of German unity and in the case of Italian independence. In each of those cases the secondary forces were so heavily massed against the event that men renowned for practical wisdom believed the event would never come. It came, irresistible and irrevocable, and we now see that Bismarck and Cavour were only the ministers of fate.

Suspended of course, and long suspended, by the action of the secondary forces, the action of the great forces may be. It was so in both the instances just mentioned. A still more remarkable instance is the long postponement of the union of Scotland with England by the antipathies resulting from the abortive attempt of Edward I., and by a subsequent train of historical accidents, such as the absorption of the energies of England in continental or civil wars. But the union came at last, and, having the great forces on its side, it came for ever. In the case before us, it appears that the great forces are those which make for the political separation of the New from the Old World. They are

I. The distance, which may be shortened by steam and telegraph for the transmission of a despot's commands, but can hardly be much shortened for the purposes of representative government. Steam increases the Transatlantic intercourse of the wealthier class, but not that of the people, who have neither money nor time for the passage. Every thing is possible in the way of nautical invention; fuel may be still further economised, though its price is not likely to fall; but it is improbable that the cost of shipbuilding or the wages of seamen will be reduced; and the growth of manufactures in the New World, which we may expect henceforth to be rapid, can hardly fail to diminish the intercourse dependent on Transatlantic trade. A commonwealth spanning the Atlantic may be a

grand conception, but political institutions must after all bear some relation to nature and to practical convenience. Few have fought against geography and prevailed.

2. Divergence of interest, which seems in this case to be as wide as possible. What has Canada to do with the European and Oriental concerns of England, with her European and Oriental diplomacy, with her European and Oriental wars? Can it be conceived that Canadian traders would allow her commerce to be cut up by Russian cruisers, or that Canadian farmers would take arms and pay war taxes in order to prevent Russia from obtaining a free passage through the Dardanelles? An English pamphlet called "The Great Game" was reprinted the other day in Canada; but the chapter on India was omitted as having no interest for Canadians. For English readers that chapter had probably more interest than all the other chapters put together. On the other hand, whenever a question about boundaries or mutual rights arises with the United States, the English people and the English government betray, by the languor of their diplomacy and the ease with which they yield, their comparative indifference to the objects in which Canada is most concerned. A Canadian periodical some time ago had a remarkable paper by a native writer, showing that the whole series of treaties made by Great Britain with the United States had been a continuous sacrifice of the claims of Canada. It was not, assuredly, that Great Britain wanted either force or spirit to fight for her own rights and interests, but that she felt that Canadian rights and interests were not her own. Her rulers could not have induced her people to go to war for an object for which they cared so little, and had so little reason to care, as a frontier line in North America. Another illustration of the difference between the British and the Canadian point of view was afforded by the recent dispute about the Extradition Treaty: England was disposed to be stiff and punctilious, having comparatively little to fear from the suspension of the treaty; while to Canada, bordering on the United States, the danger was great, and the renewal of the treaty was a vital necessity before which

punctiliousness gave way. One object there is connected with the American continent for which the British aristocracy, if we may judge by the temper it showed and the line it took towards the American republic at the time of the Rebellion, would be not unwilling to run the risk of war. But that object is one with regard to which the interests of British aristocracy and those of Canadian democracy not only are not identical, but point directly opposite ways. With regard to economical questions, the divergence is, if possible, still clearer than with regard to diplomatic questions. The economic interests of Canada must evidently be those of her own continent, and to that continent, by all the economic forces, she must be and visibly is drawn. Her currency, whatever may be the name and superscription on the coin, is American, and it is the sure symbol of her real connection. In the British manufacturer the Canadian manufacturer sees a rival; and Canada at this moment is the scene of a Protectionist movement led, curiously enough, by those "Conservative" politicians who are loudest in their. professions of loyalty to Great Britain.

3. More momentous than even the divergence of interest is the divergence of political character between the citizen of the Old and the citizen of the New World. We speak, of course, not of the French Canadians, between whom and the people of Great Britain the absence of political affinity is obvious, but of the British communities in North America. The colonisation of the New World, at least that English portion of it which was destined to give birth to the ruling and moulding power, was not merely a migration, but an exodus; it was not merely a local extension of humanity, but a development; it not only peopled another continent, but opened a new era. The curtain rose not for the old drama with fresh actors, but for a fresh drama on a fresh scene. A long farewell was said to feudalism when the New England colony landed with the rough draft of a written constitution, which embodied a social compact and founded government not on sacred tradition or divine right, but on reason and the public good. The more one sees of society in the New World, the more convinced one is that its structure essentially differs from that of soci

ety in the Old World, and that the feudal element has been eliminated completely and for ever. English aristocracy, fancying itself, as all established systems fancy themselves, the normal and final state of humanity, may cling to the belief that the new development is a mere aberration, and that dire experience will in time bring it back to the ancient path. There are people, it seems, who persuade themselves that America is retrograding towards monarchy and Church establishments. No one who knows the Americans can possibly share this dream. Monarchy has found it way to the New World only in the exceptional case of Brazil, to which the royal family of the mother country itself migrated, and where after all the Emperor is rather an hereditary president than a monarch of the European type. In Canada, government being parliamentary and "constitutional," monarchy is the delegation of a shadow; and any attempt to convert the shadow into a substance, by introducing a dynasty with a court and civil list, or by reinvesting the Viceroy with personal power, would speedily reveal the real nature of the situation. Pitt proposed to extend to Canada what as a Tory minister he necessarily regarded as the blessings of aristocracy; but the plant refused to take root in the alien soil. No peerage ever saw the light in Canada; the baronetage saw the light and no more; of nobility there is nothing now but a knighthood very small in number, and upon which the Pacific Railway scandal has cast so deep a shadow that the Home Government, though inclined that way, seems shy of venturing on more creations. Hereditary wealth and the custom of primogeniture, indispensable supports of an aristocracy, are totally wanting in a purely industrial country, where, let the law be what it might, natural justice has always protested against the feudal claims of the firstborn. To establish in Canada the State Church, which is the grand buttress of aristocracy in England, has proved as hopeless as to establish aristocracy itself. The Church lands have been secularised; the university, once confined to Anglicanism, has been thrown open; the Anglican Church has been reduced to the level of the other denominations, though its rulers still cling to the memories and to some