coast.

some places, nearer than thirty miles of the The Stikine enters the ocean by two channels; one of which is navigable by steamers a distance of thirty miles, when the water is high; the other can be navigated only by canoes. Fort Stikine, built by the Russian American Company, was leased to the Hudson Bay Company about thirty years ago, with the right of hunting and trading as far northward, in the Company's territories, as Cross Sound, a range of about three degrees of latitude. Four or five thousand people were dependent on the fort for supplies; but the great mart for the Indians was an interior village one hundred and fifty miles from the ocean, whither the Indians went four times a year, to trade at the Hudson Bay Company's establishment. This shows that the navigation of these rivers is not destitute of commercial value. If it had been withheld from British subjects, and the Americans had succeeded in 1846, in their claim to all the territory up to 54° 40′′, the British possessions to the north of that line would have been almost utterly valueless from want of communication with the sea.

New Brunswick, when not restrained by treaty, has been in the habit of imposing an export duty on American saw logs, floated down the river St. John; logs which had taken the water where one of the upper branches spreads out into the State of Maine. This duty, whatever it might be called, was really a tax on the use of the river; and it could not be allowed to remain in a treaty which gave the freedom of the Yucan, the Porcupine, and the Stikine to British subjects. The treaty of 1854, like that of 1871, abolished this duty. This tax was a local perquisite; and the Provincial Government will probably be compensated for the loss out of the Imperial exchequer. It would have been better to adhere to the prohibition contained in former, and perhaps existing, royal instructions, to colonial governors for it is difficult to say when they have been revised-to assent to no law that

imposed a duty of export, rather than, as was done in the British North American Act, to grant to one of the confederated Provinces the right of interfering with a navigation which has an international character, under the pretext of levying an export duty.

There is a certainty attached to the new navigation arrangements which the treaty of 1854 did not assure. Under that treaty, England could at any time have withdrawn from the citizens of the United States, the privilege of navigating the St. Lawrence, and this act could have been retaliated by the exclusion of British subjects from the freedom of Lake Michigan. Nothing short of war can cancel the new stipulations, for a period of twelve years. It is noteworthy that the previous treaty gave the British Government greater power over the navigation of the St. Lawrence than it gave that of the United States over Lake Michigan: while the former could at any time have closed the St. Lawrence to American vessels, the latter could only exclude British vessels from the American Lake after the British Government had provoked this retaliation by a specific act; and whenever it might have pleased England to remove the prohibition to navigate our great river, the corresponding privilege of navigating Lake Michigan would have revived.

The right of way overland, from Atlantic. ports of the Republic to the territory of the Dominion becomes, for the first time, the subject of treaty stipulation. It is but a confirmation of the privilege of the United States Bonding Act, which has been in force a quarter of a century, and under which goods destined for Canada are entered at ports of the Republic, and sent forward without the payment of duty. The right of way overland, when it is essential to the country asking it, rests substantially on the same foundation as a right of way over water: convenience and necessity. To make it the subject of treaty arrangement, is

to admit that it does not exist as of right. By obtaining it for a period of twelve years, we are protected from a repetition of the menace that the privilege may be withdrawn at a moment's notice, in a period of profound peace. But if the treaty were abrogated, a liberty which did not previously depend on any treaty, would presumably lapse, though that could not happen without a repeal of the Bonding Act. It is difficult to say whether, in the long run, we shall gain or lose more by the inclusion of this subject in the new treaty. The Commissioners, acting for their respective Governments, went on a principle that finds a ready welcome with most negotiators: providing for the present and leaving the future to statesmen of the future.

In referring to arbitration the San Juan boundary question, the only possible means of settlement has been resorted to. There had long since ceased to be any hope in diplomacy. A reference to some third party was indispensable; and there is no reason why the Emperor of Germany should not make a just award.

The treaty, though immeasurably valuable as wiping off the old scores which the two nations had run up against one another, is not without defects and omissions, more or less serious. The most conspicuous omission has already been noticed. The refusal to take cognizance of the Fenian raid claims of Canada was distinct on the part of the American Commissioners. The United States Government has not come under treaty obligations, though it had more than once done so before, to prevent its citizens from going to war with a Government with which it is at peace. Such a stipulation would necessarily have been reciprocal; but its desirability arises from the frequent recurrence of raids by American citizens and persons living under the protection of the laws of the Re

That Gov

public, on the soil of Canada. ernment is bound by the law of nations, as well as by its municipal laws and its own early traditions, to which it has occasionally in later times been flagrantly recreant, to perform this duty. But it is not the less true that it is not always well or promptly performed; and there was as much necessity to make it a subject of binding treaty obligation as to draw up rules to prevent future Alabamas playing havoc with the merce of a belligerent. The question, raised by President Grant, of the right of American fishing vessels to engage in general trade, has been overlooked, The navigation of all the rivers that run through Alaska into British territory ought, in distinct terms, to have been secured to British subjects. It may be that the three mentioned are all ; but there ought to have been left no room for uncertainty. Better still would it have been if the principle that each country has a right to navigate, in their entire length, all rivers which touch at any point on its territory, had been declared of international obligation.

Of these omissions, the first is so serious as to impair, in some measure, the value of the general settlement, which cannot easily be overrated. There remain some matters for adjustment between two of the parties interested, England and Canada, whose interests are lumped together in the treaty. England stands charged with the Fenian raids claims, and, as the case was put before the Commission, not unjustly. The refusal of the United States Government to consider them was based on the fact that the question was not included by Sir Edward Thornton, in the preliminary correspondence, as among those with which the Joint High Commission would deal. Whatever the motive for the omission, the fact throws on the English Government the pecuniary, if not also the moral and political responsibility.

H

HARDEN.Well, well, leave that aside for the present. We have, of course, his moralizing Jaques, his subjective Hamlet, his experienced Timon, his Falstaff, Richard, Iago, and all the rest; and can gauge his wit and wisdom as a dramatist. I speak of the man. DELINA. Speaking of him then as a man, I picture him to myself in his Stratford mansion at New Place, not unlike Sir Walter Scott in those bright young Abbotsford days, before ruin came on his romance of a life;genial, kindly, hearty, one of the most sagacious, far-sighted men of his time; respected by all for his shrewd common sense and also, like Scott, asserting at times with quiet dignity his rightful place among the foremost of nature's noblemen.

HARDEN. Your fancy is no photographer, but a court-painter after the fashion of the Elizabethan age, when royalty was pictured without shadows. You take your poet in sober middle age-when the wildest scapegrace gets some common sense,—after he has sown his wild oats; repented him of his youthful escapades in Charlecote chace; and is looking, no doubt, for his next cut of venison, above the salt, at Sir Thomas Lucy's own table. But surely you will not deny that we know enough of Shakespeare's early pranks to feel assured he must have been a graceless young varlet.

DELINA.-Pardon me, but our gentle Shakespeare stands, in my imaginings of him, so far above all common humanity that it grates on my ear to hear his name associated, even in banter, with such language as you now employ. It is irreverent; I would almost say profane. But, taking you on your

not precisely how young; but he was only eighteen when he married Anne HathawayHARDEN.-There you have it! Where's all the wisdom, the far-sightedness, the common sense you credit him with in that dainty procedure?

DELINA. I shall discuss that point with you willingly. But let us consider first this sowing of his wild oats, of which you have spoken. He went, I say, a mere youth, fresh from his native village, right into the great London hive; and cast in his lot with Kyd and Greene, Peele, Lilly, Marlowe, and all the rest of the actors and playwriters of his day. They were all University bred men. Lilly, a scholar, pluming himself on his fine euphuisms and pedantries, was Shakespeare's senior by some ten years; and doubtless looked down condescendingly enough on the Warwickshire lad. But, if Nash is to be credited, he was himself" as mad a lad as ever twanged;" in fact, "the very bable of London." As to Peele, and Kyd, and Greene, and Marlowe, they led the lives of rakes and debauchees ; scrambled at the theatres for a living, and died in misery; Greene, a repentant, ruined profligate, at thirty-two; Marlowe, still younger, in a wretched tavern brawl. Shakespeare shared with them the same busy haunts of social life; as in later days with Ben Jonson, Drayton, and other wit-combatants of the "Mermaid" in Friday Street; and learned for himself what Eastcheap and its ways

were.

HARDEN. Well, and how did it end? In a fever brought on by the roystering merry-meeting with that same Drayton and Jonson, which finished your wisest and most