France. The ascendancy of the priesthood is beginning to be shaken, by railroads, which break into parish seclusion; by the progress, though slow, of education; and most of all, by intercourse with the Republicans of New England, whence not a few of the French who have gone to work in the New England factories return, bringing with them Republican ideas. Another element of religious, or at least of ecclesiastical, change, is the advent of the Jesuit, who has succeeded in extorting a partial indemnity for the estates sequestered at the time of the conquest, and whose wiles have largely prevailed. The old Quebec priest was Gallican, unambitious, living in perfect amity with the State, and in his views limited to his Canadian parish. The Jesuit has larger and less unequivocal aims.

Had participation in the South African War been put to the vote of the French-Canadian people, there would probably have been an overwhelming majority against it. But the Premier was a Frenchman. The French followed him from national feeling, and thus French sentiment was masked. The French members at Ottawa went with the Premier, owing their seats to the influence of his party. But Mr. Bourassa, an opponent of the war, resigned his seat for the purpose of testing the opinion of his constituents, and was re-elected by acclamation.

There are now twelve hundred thousand native-born Canadians in the United States. The great centres of employment draw, and a Canadian youth has little more hesitation in going to better himself at Chicago or at New York than a Scotch or Yorkshire youth has in going to better himself in Manchester or London. In the Pacific States of the Union also British

Two articles by Mr. Bourassa on "The FrenchCanadian and the British Empire" appeared in the Monthly Review for September and October

Canadians abound, while French-Canadians swarm in the factories of New England. Canadians have a good name and are in request among employers in the United States. Interest prevails over prejudice, and the Canadian who has been giving vent to loyal anti-Americanism one day may accept a "call" to the other side of the line on the next. Of this there have been amusing cases. In race, language, religion, political tendencies, and the fundamental character of their institutions, the population on the north and that on the south of a conventional line are one. Intermarriage is common. Churches and associations of all kinds, benevolent, literary, scientific, and industrial, join hands across the line; some of them totally disregard it. The paper currency of the United States circulates freely in Canada. Canadian banks do a great deal of business in the United States and Canadians speculate largely in the stock market of New York. The wealthy classes of the two countries meet in their summer resorts. The periodical literature of Canada is mainly American, and American papers, especially Sunday papers, have a considerable circulation. A presidential election creates almost as much interest in Canada as in the States. The political institutions, though differing in important details, are in principle fundamentally the same; so are the methods by which they are operated, the cant language in which the people speak of them, and the political character which they form. The Canadian Government believed itself to have ascertained that there were forty thousand Canadian enlistments in the army of the United States during the War of Secession. Apart from political sentiment, there is in fact nothing to divide the two

1902, and a reply to them in the November number of the same year.

populations from each other except the territorial and fiscal line. They are rapidly mingling in the North-West.

It is obvious how widely the cireumstances of Canada, especially with regard to her relation with the United States, differ from those of the other eolonies, particularly from those of Australia and New Zealand, and how difficult, consequently, it would be to force her into a fiscal union. The States of Germany were of the same nationality, though under different governments; they were territorially in a ring-fence and their commercial interests were generally the same. Yet it took an arduous struggle to bring about the Zollverein. No divergence of interest among the Colonies was called into play in sending the contingents to the Boer War.

Protectionist monopoly, especially on the American side, has done its best to sever Canada commercially from the rest of her continent. But Nature struggles hard, and not unsuccessfully, against the malignant greed of man. The trade between the two countries is still large, and there was a notable increase in it last year. The United States want Canadian timber, pulp, coals, minerals, and farm produce. For farm produce evidently the nearest market is the best. Canada, on the other hand, is a natural market for the manufactures which the Americans produce on a large scale. There was a reciprocity treaty between the two countries till 1866, when Canada lost it through the conduct of the governing class of England in violently espousing the cause of the South, a fact which should be borne in mind when the balance of the obligation between the Imperial country and the colony is to be struck. In spite of the patriotic attempts of Canadian statesmen to keep the lines of communication and transportation apart, they are intimately connected.

The winter ports of

Canada are Portland, Boston and New York, from which, according to Mr. Carnegie, thirty-seven per cent. of Canadian exports are shipped. American capital is being largely invested in Canada. For Canada a commercial war with the United States would be disastrous. The power of retaliation would be far greater on the side of the Americans, with their boundless variety of home productions and their vast internal market.

What, after all, in an economical point of view, is this unity of the Empire, for the consolidation of which commercial war is to be proclaimed against the world? What is the Empire but the aggregate result of accidents of war and discovery governed by no plan or regard for community of economical interests? What reason is there for presuming that all its parts ought, in defiance of the indications of nature, and at great risk of incurring the commercial enmity of other nations, to be forced into a fiscal union? Canada was conquered to rid of a formidable neighbor the British colonies in America, which presently cast off their allegiance.

The future of the North-West is now the great subject of interest and speculation. The extent of the wheat-growing land, though not yet ascertained, is certainly immense, while the wheat is of the finest quality, and the roots are as fine as the wheat. Nor does it seem that there is any danger of exhaustion. On the other hand, the climate is very severe; forty below zero being not very uncommon, even a lower temperature being not unknown. The winter is too long, the summer is too short, and there is a danger of frost at harvest time. The summer air is delicious and health-giving. There is now coal enough. What is wanting is wood. There is a dreariness in the boundless expanse without hill or tree, but the sensibilities of the pioneer, tilling

a rich soil, are not apt to be very keen. The prairie being so apt for the machine, it seemed that large farming might pay there. Large farming was tried, but the expense of keeping the staff through the winter proved too great. Of the waifs of European population imported by the Government, some, particularly the Mennonites, have made good farmers, but they have not made good citizens. The best settlers are the Americans, natives to the prairie and to the style of farming. They will probably predominate in the future. Young Englishmen have not done well, though they do better on ranches than on farms. Many of them went with the contingent. The farmer must work hard, live hard, and bargain hard; perhaps to the young English gentleman the last is not the least difficult of the three.

The Canadian Constitution is in form that of a nation with a federal structure; the national element being modelled after the British Constitution, the federal element after that of the United States. The national element in the Canadian polity, however, is stronger than it is or has hitherto been in that of the United States. The Senate, supposed to answer to the House of Lords, is appointed, nominally, by the Crown, really by the Prime Minister.

After the long reign of Sir John Macdonald, who was master of the country, with a brief intermission, for thirty years, the Senate was overwhelmingly Conservative; a run on the other side since his death has turned it Liberal. The Governor-General reigns and does not govern, unless it be underhand. There has latterly been a tendency to give the office the air of royalty and to introduce the state and pageantry of a Court, which take with the high society of Canada.

The political system is party. The parties trace their pedigree to those

which existed in the two united provinces before confederation; one based upon the British and Protestant, the other on the French and Catholic province. But there has ceased to be any dividing-line of principle. The result is a perpetual struggle of two factions for power with the usual instruments of faction, as recent revelations have shown. A Member of Parliament who dared to be independent was deprived of his seat by the joint action of the two parties, which openly combined their forces for that purpose. The powers of commerce, the great railroad companies especially, hover over the two parties, and play for their own purposes upon them both. Federal parties extend to the provinces, where, as there can be no national questions, there is, if possible, less of a dividing principle to give rationality or dignity to the contest. The Canadians are worthy people, probably there are none worthier in the world; but Canadian politics leave something to be desired. Nor can the general character of the people remain wholly unaffected by the example of public life.

It is an anxious question what will be the political effect of the great American immigration into the NorthWest. Time alone can show. But the probability is that the Americans will take kindly to institutions closely akin to their own, and become, for all ordinary purposes, good Canadians; though it is very unlikely that they will become Imperialists and wish to spend the earnings of their labor in the destruction of South African Republics or the conquest of the Soudan. Commercial interests cannot fail to draw them closely to the adjacent States of the Union. What seems certain is, that when the North-West fills up, the centre of power must shift to it, and Ontario, which paid largely for the opening up of the North-West by the construction of the Canadian Pa

A peculiar feature of Canadian politics is "United Empire Loyalism," the political religion of a group of families tracing their origin to the Royalist exiles of the American Revolution, and doing their best to keep those memories alive. They are, of course, intensely anti-American and Imperialist. Their feelings must be mixed when they see Great Britain falling upon the neck of the American Republic. Many a descendant, however, of United Empire Loyalists may probably now be found on the south of the line. An English audience listening to a political missionary of the United Empire Loyalist order, and fancying that it hears the voice of Canada, is apt to be led astray.

Orangeism is, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the Orange Lodges still are, a power in politics; but the religious war between them and the Roman Catholics is at an end. The Irish Catholic vote is strong. Twice under its influence the Dominion Parliament has passed resolutions of sympathy with Home Rule; the second time after receiving a rebuke from the Imperial Government for interfering with the question. The Legislature of Ontario, under the late Sir Oliver Mowat, passed a resolution censuring Lord Salisbury's renewal of the Crimes Act.

Lord Durham thought that in uniting the two Provinces, French and British Canada, he assured complete British ascendancy, which he regarded as the law of nature. He was mistaken. The French held together, and forming a party with a section of the British, brought government at last to a deadlock, escape from which was found in confederation of all the British colonies in North America. New Brunswick came in with little hesitation. Nova Scotia refused, but was

resented. Prince Edward Island came in later. The Canadian Pacific Railway was constructed to take in British Columbia. In the debate on confederation, when the familiar simile of the bundle of sticks was used to prove that union made force, it was replied that the same could not be said of seven fishing-rods tied together by the ends. British Columbia sends a delegation to Ottawa and Eastern Canada speculates in her mines; otherwise she is almost out of ken, nor could the man in the street of Eastern Canada give any account of the political distractions to which she seems to be a prey. She is ominously embraced between the Pacific States of the Union and the American territory of Alaska. Nor in the case of the other Provinces does confederation amount to political fusion. The builder of a Dominion government has to pay something for each stone of his edifice.

Distance and the interposition of French Quebec between Ontario and the group of Maritime Provinces still keep them socially separate from each other, and there is little interchange of population.

Will some enthusiastic advocate of the present system please rise and explain why, after twenty years of confederation, a Nova Scotian is never seen in Ontario except as a traveller or a delegate to some denominational convention, and why, with the exception of the "Drummer," an Ontario man is as great a curiosity in Nova Scotia as a South Sea Islander? There seems to be something generally wrong with a system which, after twenty years of enthusiastic gush over the confederation and the building of a national sentiment, has for its product complete isolation between the several provinces; which sees the merchants of the maritime provinces making constant visits in the way of trade to Boston and New York, and none to Toronto, which sees the business men of On

tario going daily backward and forward between that province and the American cities about them, and coming to Halifax in the way of business once in a century.

So wrote an eminent Nova Scotian twenty years ago, and it is believed that nearly the same thing might be said now so far as the interchange of population is concerned.

Since the revolution of 1837 the separation of the Church from the State in the British Provinces has been complete, though not so complete in Quebec. In Ontario the Catholic Church, having the command of the Irish vote, is able to exact the privilege of separate schools. Wealth and fashion in Canada, as in the United States, inIcline to the Anglican Church with its hierarchy, its ritual, and its English connection. Methodism is the church of the people; more of the people perhaps than of John Wesley, for spiritual enthusiasm inevitably spends its force, and objects less distinctly spiritual succeed.

The tie which binds Canada as a dependency to the Imperial country has, by successive concessions of self-government, been worn thin. The sovereign power still remains in the King and Parliament of Great Britain. The Canadian Constitution is embodied in an Imperial Act, alterable only by the same authority. Otherwise the bonds consist of the Governor-Generalship, divested, like the monarchy which it represents, of real powers; the command of the Militia, perpetually contested by the Canadian Minister of that Department; a veto, almost formal, on Canadian legislation; an appellate jurisdiction which has been greatly reduced, with a prospect, after the Australian example, of further reduction; and the fountain of honor-i. e., of titles and decorations. It is a question whether of the surviving preroga

"Handbook of Commercial Union," pp. 113, 114.

tives the last is not the most etrective. The thirst for titles and decorations is great. Some years ago a leading Liberal moved in the Canadian Parliament against the profuse distribution of Imperial titles, the effect of which on the devotion of the bearers to the interests of their own country he reasonably feared. Yet the same man could not help taking a title when it was offered him. Decorations have been recently solicited and received for an encounter which took place more than thirty years ago. In the Canadian Almanac there is a list of titled Canadians forming a sort of miniature peerage. tary titles also are much prized.

Mili

Imperial Federation has been preached in Canada by a small but enthusiastic party for many years without ever assuming a tangible shape. No one has yet pretended to say what the government of the federation was to be, what was to be its relation to the British monarchy and Foreign Office; how its decrees and requisitions were to be enforced; or what was to be done with India.

Canadian writers bewail the betrayal of Canadian interests to the Americans by the weakness of British diplomacy. Especially do they deplore the loss, by the Ashburton Treaty, of Maine, which carried with it the winter port of Portland. The answer apparently is that the British Government has done the best for the Canadians that diplomacy could do, and has obtained for them, even in the case of the Ashburton Treaty, more than they could have obtained for themselves. But Great Britain has ceased to be a military power on the Western Continent, or to be able to enforce her claims against the United States by arms. Such is the fact, however unwelcome it may be. Canadians in their warlike mood, conscious that nothing could be done against the power of the United States on land, used to talk of bombarding New York.