The expense of the great expeditions which culminated in the victory on the Plains of Abraham is a considerable item in the National Debt, but half a continent now held by Canadians is no insignificant item to set against it. If the expenditure for the American War be put down as a mistake, it must be remembered that the United States themselves, no less than Canada, reaped the advantage from the previous expenditure which set the Anglo-Saxon on the American continent free from French rivalry[5].
Fifty years ago the French Government asked the British Foreign Office how much of the vast unoccupied {98} areas of Australia it claimed. 'The whole of it,' was the prompt reply. No doubt the recollection of the Plains of Abraham, of Trafalgar, of Waterloo, had something to do with the acceptance of that reply as conclusive.
If the colonies are able to expend their borrowings on reproductive works alone, this advantage is not entirely due to their own superior prudence, but in part at least to the circumstance that they have been protected by a great Imperial power not afraid to go into debt for national ends. Gibraltar and Malta, Aden, Singapore, and Hong Kong, the Cape and St. Helena, stations in every corner of the world for the protection of the commerce of the colonies as much as that of the United Kingdom, are the best answers to those who sneer at the National Debt of Great Britain.
The United States incurred a war debt of more than 2000,000,000 dollars, not indeed in carrying out a foreign policy, right or wrong, but in remedying mistakes of internal policy. The war brought no vast addition of territory; it simply saved the state from disruption. No one doubts that the expenditure has been more than repaid by the national unity and greatness which it secured. But the very people who were crushed by that vast outlay have been obliged, since they remain within the nation, to contribute to the payment of the debt incurred.
They are obliged to contribute their share of the vast pension roll, amounting to much more than 100,000,000 dollars per annum, paid to the soldiers of the Union {99} who crushed them. Compared with this, the magnanimity of the mother-land in handing over to her younger communities, absolutely free from incumbrance either of mortgage, of military responsibility, or of commercial restraint, the major part of those vast assets which she had to show for her national debt, seems to me amazing. A colonist, reproaching England with her foreign policy and the debt which it led to, cuts a sorry figure in the face of these facts. And if we put the £30,000,000 added to the debt of England in order to extinguish slavery beside the price paid by the United States for the same national purification, we shall discover reasons for thinking that there may be national mistakes worse than those to be discovered in the foreign policy of Britain.
Sir Charles Dilke says[6]: 'It is a remarkable instance of past Imperial carelessness that the very principles upon which the burden of defence should be divided between ourselves and colonies, and the proportions in which it should be borne, have never been settled.'
And again[7]: 'It is not the United Kingdom only but the whole British Empire which needs consistent and united organization for defence. The colonies should be represented on our great General Staff, and the principle of self-preservation, applied to the Empire, should be disentangled from the petty {100} political questions by which the relations between the mother-country and her children are often hampered and sometimes embittered. … Unfortunately, considerations of Imperial defence, which should be regarded from the point of view of common self-interest, are apt to become mixed up with the individual and fleeting interests of various portions of the Empire. If, as I hope, we are to continue to stand together as a confederacy holding the future of the greater portion of the world in its hands, the inhabitants of the home islands and of the colonies must come to an understanding for mutual support during the crisis of civilization in which we may find ourselves at any moment.'
I have often had occasion to quote Sir Charles Dilke's opinions on questions which have come within the range of this discussion. The luminous and exhaustive statement of the condition and resources of the Empire contained in the two volumes of the 'Problems of Greater Britain,' though somewhat weighted by detail, and in my opinion weakened by an imperfect balancing of the primary and secondary forces at work in the colonies, is still by far the most valuable contribution yet made to the study of our national position. The line of argument by which the author proves the necessity for closer defensive organization of the different parts of the Empire seems to me overwhelming in its conclusiveness. His demand that the colonies should be represented on the General Staff which is to constitute the {101} brain of the nation in military questions, his impressive warnings that the mother-land and colonies must stand side by side in protecting the commerce and civilization which both have borne a part in building up, make it very difficult to understand the hesitating and irresolute attitude which he takes in his chapter (vol. ii. part vii.) on 'Future Relations' to the question of Federation, or any defined system of political union. Military combination, even for defensive purposes alone, must certainly mean a common foreign policy and the joint expenditure which is necessary to make it effective; a common foreign policy and expenditure imply some means of giving adequate expression to the will of all the communities concerned; and to most minds that, I think, will point directly and inevitably to some form of common representation. Military authorities may plan and advise, but under any British system of government political authorities who derive their mandate directly from the citizens can alone make the plan effective. Mere alliance could never accomplish all that the author of the 'Problems of Greater Britain' believes essential to the safety of the Empire. Alliance is temporary and easily revocable, and therefore by no means a settlement of permanent national questions. The moment that an attempt is made to remedy the carelessness complained of, to settle the principles upon which the burden of defence is to be divided between the mother-land and colonies, 'to come to an understanding for mutual support,' it will be found {102} that immediately behind the military problem is the political problem[8].
[1] Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1891.
[2] While these pages are going through the press there comes, as if to qualify what is here said, the news that a young Canadian, Captain William H. Robinson, of the Royal Engineers, has met a soldier's death while leading, with conspicuous courage, an attack on Tambi in Sierra Leone. Trained in Canadian schools, and graduated with the highest honours from the Canadian Military College at Kingston, he had steadily pushed his way forward in the Imperial service and had for some time been in charge of the important fortifications in course of construction at Sierra Leone. In the ardent pursuit of his profession he had specially volunteered for the service on which he was engaged when he met his end. As his teacher I had occasion to watch over the early development of his very exceptional powers. Britain has, first and last, sacrificed many precious lives on Canadian soil, but in Captain Robinson Canada has begun to repay the debt to the mother-land with one of the most promising of the sons she has yet produced.
[3] 'I should like to ask the friends of federation whether the colonies of this country—Canada, and the great colonies which cluster in the South Pacific and in Australia—whether these colonies would be willing to bind themselves to the stupid and regrettable foreign policy of the Government of this country? Will they take the responsibility of entering into wars which will be 10,000 miles away, and in which they can have no possible interest or influence, and in which they could have been in no degree consulted as to the cost? My opinion is that the colonies will never stand a policy of that kind.'—John Bright at Birmingham, March 28th, 1888.
[4] A Liberal Foreign Minister has lately expressed the same thought in other words. 'Our great Empire has pulled us, so to speak, by the coat-tails out of the European system; and though with our great predominance, our great moral influence, and our great fleet, with our traditions in Europe and our aspirations to preserve the peace of Europe, we can never remove ourselves altogether from the European system, we must recognise that our foreign policy has become a colonial policy, and is in reality at this moment much more dictated from the extremities of the empire than it is from London itself.'—Lord Rosebery to the City Liberal Club, March 23rd, 1892.
[5] American writers admit this, 'The Seven Years' War made England what she is. It crippled the commerce of her rival, ruined France in two continents, and blighted her as a colonial power. It gave England the control of the seas, and the mastery of North America and India, made her the first of commercial nations, and prepared the vast colonial system that has planted New Englands in every part of the globe. And while it made England what she is it supplied to the United States the indispensable condition of their greatness, if not of their national existence:—Introduction to Montcalm and Wolfe (Parkman).
[6] Problems of Greater Britain, vol. ii. 522.
[7] United Service Magazine, April, 1890.
[8] Since the above was written a very distinct advance of thought on the question of British unity has been indicated in the work on 'Imperial Defence,' just published by Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Spencer Wilkinson. The authors say (p. 54): 'It is enough to say, that the great question, perhaps the greatest question, which has to be answered by the present generation of Englishmen, is whether the British Empire is to become a series of independent, though, perhaps, friendly states, or to make a reality of the military unity which at the present time is rather a sentiment than a practical institution. It is evidently impossible to organise the defences of the Empire until this prior question has been settled, and it is quite impossible until it has been faced to determine properly the policy of Great Britain. If the principle of the unity of the Empire and the unity of its defences is maintained the greatest conceivable degree of security would have been gained for the whole and for every part, and the British Empire could afford, as against the attack, of any single power, to steer clear of all alliances and to pursue a policy solely to the immediate welfare of its subjects. … Before, then, the defence of the British Empire can be placed throughout on a permanently satisfactory footing, it seems necessary that the great political question of the century should be settled, and that Englishmen all over the world should make up their minds as to the real nature of Greater Britain.' The most ardent Federationist could not wish for a more succinct statement of the national position than this.
{103}
To understand the relation of the United Kingdom to the question of national unity we must try to grasp the main features of the astonishing and unparalleled change which in the last half or three quarters of a century has come over the industrial condition of the British Islands. This change has left them in a position absolutely unique among the nations of the present day, a position, moreover, to which history furnishes no parallel.
It has been estimated that when the Queen came to the throne, of the working population of the country one-third were agricultural labourers, and one-third were artizans. There has since been an addition of from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 to the whole population, and at the end of this period of remarkable growth we find ourselves face to face with the overwhelming fact that of all the working classes of Great Britain only an eighth are agricultural labourers while three-fourths are artizans. What this means is in no way more tersely described than when we say that Britain has become the workshop of the {104} world. What it involves is the conclusion that never in the history of the human race has any great nation lived under such artificial conditions as do British people at the end of this period of extraordinary industrial development, a period which has its limit well within the century. All the circumstances of national existence have been revolutionized.
After the application to the soil of intense culture, of scientific skill, of abundant capital, of cheap labour, only about 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 quarters of wheat are produced out of the 28,000,000 quarters which now represent the annual consumption. The rest comes from the far distant prairies of the United States and Canada, from India, South Australia, New Zealand, the Black Sea and the Baltic. With other cereals it is the same, the demand for those which cannot be produced at all in Great Britain, such as rice and maize, being immense.
Cheap ocean freights, which make it possible to transfer a bushel of wheat by sea from Montreal or New York to London at a lower price than it can be carried by rail from some English counties to London, handicap the English producer still more. It seems as if the dependence upon the outside world for grain supplies were likely to increase, not merely with the rapid increase of population which is still going on, but with the necessity of applying the land to more profitable forms of production as ocean transit is still further cheapened, and as increasing prosperity leads to a greater consumption of animal food.
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As with grain foods so with meat. Hundreds of thousands of live cattle, many hundred thousand tons of meat, chilled, frozen, salted, or tinned, pour into the country every year from across the sea. Canada alone last year sent 123,000 head of cattle; New Zealand nearly 1,500,000 frozen carcasses of sheep. It has been estimated that the quantity of meat food in the United Kingdom at any time is only sufficient to supply the market for three months; beyond that all must come from without.
So also with cheese, fruit, and other staple articles of consumption. Still more striking is the dependence on distant lands for a wide range of articles once esteemed luxuries, but now reckoned among the comforts, if not the necessities, of daily life, such as sugar, tea, and coffee. If the massing of facts into figures best conveys to some minds the nature of the situation it may be put in the statement that every year the United Kingdom pays for articles used for food brought from abroad the sum of £153,000,000 sterling. Or it may be better illustrated by a comparison. Draw around almost any other nation or country of modern times—Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia—a barrier preventing the ingress of any food supply from the outer world. There will be inconvenience, some measure of restriction of consumption in a few particulars, but the condition is one which could be endured not merely for months but for years. Place a like barrier around the British Islands and {106} in six weeks the pressure of want will begin to be felt; in six months starvation will be the prevalent condition of the population.
Such a picture is, of course, imaginary—the fact which lies behind it is stern reality.
The illustration emphasizes, but does not exaggerate, the absolutely unique nature of the national position.
For the first time in the course of human history we have had in the last half century presented to us in the British Islands the spectacle of a great people depending for its existence upon the safe and continuous transport from the most remote corners of the globe of about two-thirds of the chief articles of daily consumption.
That the outlook of such a people upon the world should differ fundamentally from that of any other people of past times or of the present day is manifest. What has been said is not meant to prove that the situation is one which should necessarily induce extraordinary anxiety. Difficulties are to be measured by the resources at hand to grapple with them. Danger only comes when the sense of proportion between the two is lost.
Food is not all. Britain the workshop of the world, and three-fourths of its working population artizans! Upon what do these vast armies of industry, these millions of working men and women, spend their toil to earn the wages that buy the food thus brought to them from such great distances and at {107} such expense? Once more we find the ends of the earth scoured to furnish them with the raw material upon which they work. Wool from Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa, South America; cotton from the Southern States, India, Egypt; timber from Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, Honduras; precious metals, ores, jute, hemp and other fibres, oils, gums, ivory, shells, hides, furs, precious stones—everything that can be moulded for use or beauty, all productions of land and sea, are poured forth day by day from the holds of a thousand ships in the greater ports of the United Kingdom to be transferred to the centres of British industry.
The critical character of this dependence for a perfectly steady supply of raw material is under modern conditions as striking as the extent of the dependence. The great Yorkshire woollen spinners tell us that to be cut off even for three or four weeks from the supplies of Australian wool would mean the closing of hundreds or thousands of factories and a widespread paralysis of industry. They point out that when the regularity of sea transport depended upon wind and weather, or when the home market supplied a larger share of the material, common prudence made it necessary to lay in heavy stocks to provide against contingencies for many months. So fixed has now become the habit of depending upon the regular arrival of ocean steam-ships from week to week, the regular sequence of great wool sales at frequent stated periods, that it is possible {108} in manufacturing to live as it were from hand to mouth; that, as a matter of fact, a large proportion of manufacturers do so live, purchasing only enough for their immediate wants, and renewing their stock at very short intervals. Thus the effect of any stoppage of sea-transport would be disastrously felt at once, reaching in its influence alike the manufacturing capitalist and the workman in his cottage.
A group of manufacturers at Galashiels, one of the important Scottish centres of the wool trade, told me that nine out of every ten pounds of wool they used was Australian. The proportion can scarcely be less in the Bradford district and other large areas of Yorkshire. Nor are such illustrations of the completeness of dependence on supplies abroad exceptional or confined to wool. Cut off Dundee from its importations of Indian jute and the collapse of its main industry would be sudden and general. Lancashire is not likely to forget what it means to lose control of her ordinary markets for obtaining raw cotton. We may put together once more the figures which express this marvellous relation to British industry to the remoter parts of the world.
For wool last year Britain paid £26,000,000; for raw cotton £40,000,000; wood £14,000,000; metals £23,000,000; flax, hemp, and jute £10,000,000; and so on.
But even what has been said of food and raw material of manufacture exhibits but one side of the national position. To be the workshop of the world {109} implies access to the markets of the world. I say nothing of the vast centres of commerce abroad which serve as the main points of distribution. But go to the loneliest Australian or New Zealand bush; to the backwoods and remote prairies of Canada; to distant South African gold and diamond diggings, and we find the shelves of the humblest shop filled with the products of the looms of Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Paisley, of the factories everywhere scattered throughout the United Kingdom where the vast inflow of raw material is worked up. To foreign countries, as well as to those inhabited by British people, to every civilized or uncivilized continent, district, or island, however remote, these manufactures penetrate, and must continue to penetrate, if the vast fabric of British industry is to be maintained.
Once more, the figures which represent the annual aggregate of export trade are immense: cotton goods £70,000,000; woollen goods £26,000,000; iron and steel £28,000,000; machinery £ 13,000,000.
Between this great inflow of raw material and food, and the equally great output of manufactured goods, has sprung up yet another prime factor in Britain's industrial position, her shipping interests. She has become by far the greatest of ocean carriers. It is not merely that scores of millions of capital are invested in ships alone; that 60 per cent. of all the steam tonnage of the world and a large proportion of its sailing tonnage are under the British flag; that tens of thousands of men find employment {110} upon the seas, and tens of thousands more in the immediate handling of ships and their cargoes around British harbours and docks. The mere construction of ships and their equipment for this vast carrying trade gives an impulse to almost every form of British industry. The shipyards of the Clyde alone turn out at times a thousand tons or more of iron or steel shipping for every working day of the year. The vast aggregate for the whole country forms a large element in the industrial life of the nation.
Here, then, in roughest outline, is a picture of the unique position which the British Islands hold in the world today. Let us remind ourselves once more that the extreme singularity of this situation has been created well within the span of an ordinary life, for the sea-borne commerce of the United Kingdom, which today has an annual value of more than £740,000,000, was, when the Queen came to the throne in 1837, only £155,000,000. The difference between these figures fairly measures the increased dependence of the country upon its imports, exports, and the carrying trade.
Now for a nation existing under conditions such as have been described, where the work and wages and food of the masses of the people depend on easy and constant access to the remotest corners of the globe, it seems possible to indicate what must be the end and aim of national policy—the supreme objects of statesmanship. Surely the first object must be to {111} secure the absolute safety for trading purposes of the water-ways of the world.
Maritime security Britain is bound to maintain, if she is to retain manufacturing superiority. The only manufacturing rival which seriously threatens her is the United States. It is a friendly rivalry, and should remain such. But each country, with what advantages it has, will play relentlessly for its own hand, and for the welfare, real or supposed, of its own people. Britain carries on the contest by means of Free Trade, thereby cheapening production, and winning the market of the world. The United States use for their weapon Protection, stimulating production till it becomes cheap. Britain also, under this opposing condition, depends for food and material on the outside world—the United States have the food and most of the material within themselves. The first serious break in Britain's power to hold the waterways of the world would place her at a fatal disadvantage. Safe in a continental isolation the United States could supply the customers who came to her for manufactured goods with what they wanted. To be on even terms Britain must have maritime security, and this she could not have if by the successive cutting away of her great outlying offshoots she should lose control of those points of vantage which now are the secret of her supremacy quite as much as the ships which she sends forth from her dockyards.
Second only to maritime security seems to me the necessity for a country in the position of Great Britain {112} to keep as far as possible the sources from which she draws her food and raw material within the national domain.
Great Britain has had at least one sharp reminder of the advantage which would accrue to a country so dependent as she is on the outside world of having the areas of production under the national flag. This reminder was one which gave a rough shock to the generally accepted theory that if the consumer wants to buy and the producer wants to sell, all the conditions for satisfactory commercial intercourse between countries are fulfilled without reference to national relationship. In 1865 the War of Secession broke out in America, and the ports of the cotton-producing states were blockaded. Millions of bales of cotton were wasting on the wharves and in the warehouses at New Orleans, Charleston, and other Southern towns. On the other hand, in Lancashire millions of spindles were idle, and vast bodies of people were reduced to extreme need or thrown for a long period upon the charity of the benevolent from want of the raw material of their industry. The producers certainly wished to sell, the consumers to purchase. English manufacturers had money with which to buy—English shippers had the vessels to carry—the English Government had the men-of-war which could easily have forced a way to the supplies which were needed. Between was the barrier of international law and national honour, which forbid a neutral nation to interfere with belligerents. The barrier was respected, {113} and England passed triumphantly through the moral strain involved in resisting the temptation to go to war for an industrial end alone. The lesson to be learned from such an example appears manifest. The retention of the national right to keep open the communication between the centre of consumption and the areas of supply is alike desirable for the industry of the one and of the other. To give an obvious illustration. The vast woollen industries of Yorkshire are supplied almost exclusively from regions now within the Empire—New Zealand, Australia, India, and South Africa. So long as these countries remain under a common British flag the working man who produces the wool and the working man who spins it retain the national right to keep their industries in touch with each other: the moment they pass out from under the flag that right is given up. Great Britain would have no more right to force her way into the ports of an independent Australia or New Zealand, blockaded by a German, French, or Chinese fleet, than she had to force her way into the harbours of Louisiana or South Carolina. The neutral flag may furnish a way of escape for Britain's industry when she is herself in direct conflict with another power; it gives no assistance when a nation with which she is at peace chooses to close the ports of a country from which she draws her food or the material of her industry. The reader will find that the illustration is a far-reaching one if he extends it to the whole range of Britain's wants either for supply or for markets for her manufactured {114} goods; and to the whole range of colonial necessity for a market for their staple products, and a supply of what they do not produce.
Still more significant is the illustration if he remember that as regards food supply the Empire might, in an emergency, soon become entirely independent of foreign countries, while, with the single exception of cotton, we could tide over an indefinite period even in the matter of raw material for manufacture.
{115}
WHEN we come to regard our question from the colonial point of view the first place in any consideration must obviously be given to Canada. The national problem is there presented to us in a crucial form. The growth and consolidation of the Dominion have done more than anything else to make manifest the anomalous condition of the Empire. In it we have a colony with a population twice as large as the United States had when they became independent, larger than that of England in Elizabeth's time, or than that of some considerable European States at the present day. It is a population which has proved itself equal to the highest duties of citizenship. The slowness of earlier growth has not been without advantage, since it has unquestionably given steadiness and maturity to political thought. With comparative suddenness Canada has now caught the inspiration of a large national life. Vast undertakings in the direction of material progress are entered upon with confidence and executed with success. On political lines her people have been the first to prove by actual experiment {116} on a large scale the adaptability of a federal system to British methods of representative and responsible government. Since confederation was entered into nearly twenty-five years ago self-reliance has become the keynote of Canadian life and has produced its legitimate and ordinary results. In material development, in political organization, in the spirit of the people, the Dominion has reached the stage looked forward to by early thinkers on colonial problems as the one at which it might reasonably be expected to assume an independent national existence. It must therefore soon bring to the test the theories of these thinkers as to the results of national expansion.
The position of Canada is made unique among British colonies by another condition. She is so placed geographically that annexation to another kindred state is a manifestly possible alternative to either independence or continued British connection. Whether independence, annexation to the United States, or a closer and permanent union with the Empire is most consistent with the honour and interest of the Canadian people, and whether the separation of Canada from the Empire is a matter of indifference to the British nation at large, are questions to be here discussed.
Facts of geography, facts of history, and questions of trade relations, must enter chiefly into the consideration.
There is an advantage in giving the first place to geography.
{117}
A glance at the map shows the relation of Canada to the Oceanic Empire of which it now forms a part. It fronts towards Europe on the Atlantic and towards Asia on the Pacific. On both oceans it gives the finest naval positions that a great maritime power could desire, and the only positions possible for British people on the American continent. A wonderful system of waterways penetrates, from the Atlantic frontage, unto the very heart of the continent, to prairies which are the greatest undeveloped wheat area in the world, lands capable of supporting a large population and of proved capacity to yield a vast surplus of food products. The trend of the Great Lakes and of the St. Lawrence towards the point which gives the shortest sea connection with Europe indicates the natural direction in which this food surplus will chiefly flow. Should the still open question of the summer navigation of Hudson's Bay by grain vessels be settled in the affirmative, even the facilities offered by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence for cheap transit would be eclipsed, and western wheat placed on English markets at a rate hitherto unknown. But this is a contingency, and it is perhaps better to confine the attention to settled facts.
The significance of Canada's geographical position, facing and commanding the two great northern oceans at the points nearest to the opposite continents of Europe and Asia, is supplemented by geological facts of extreme national interest. At the very point where the Dominion stretches out furthest towards Europe, {118} and where the maritime provinces furnish open harbours all the year round, we find in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton inexhaustible supplies of excellent coal. The coal areas of this region are the only sources: of supply in Eastern America northward of Pennsylvania, and the only sources directly upon the eastern coast of the continent, where they seem to give a singular advantage for both transatlantic and transcontinental trade. Crossing now the 3800 miles which measure the breadth of the continent, we come to the Pacific coast, and the excellent harbours with which it also is everywhere indented. The importance to the Empire of these harbours is manifest, since they are the only ports under the British flag on the whole Pacific coast of America from Cape Horn to the Behring Sea, the only base of naval supply, the only means the Empire has of matching the Russian depot, Vladivostock (soon to be in direct connection with St. Petersburg itself), over which they have the great advantage of being open all the year round. They furnish the base from which the trade of the North Pacific is, and must be, protected. For the defence and prosecution of trade, still more important than the harbours themselves is the fact that in the Island of Vancouver, where Canada stretches out so as to give the shortest route to Japan and China, we have again an abundance of coal. The importance of these deposits is enhanced by the circumstance that all other coal found on the Pacific coast from Cape Horn northward to Puget Sound is of an inferior quality, {119} and limited in quantity. San Francisco itself obtains a large part of its coal from Vancouver Island in the north, or from the British colony of New South Wales on the other side of the Pacific.
Looking East and West, then, the Dominion has its maritime position confirmed by its supplies of coal. This is not all. Deposits extending over thousands of square miles have been discovered midway in the great prairie region, at once solving the fuel problem for a treeless country and supplying the force that carries trade and population across the continent. Later discoveries in the Rocky Mountains indicate the presence there of an anthracite coal peculiarly adapted to naval use, and likely to supply our ships in the Pacific with fuel of a quality equal to any that British mines can furnish.
The facts of Canada's maritime position thus broadly stated will, I think, leave on most minds the impression that should the country pass under a foreign flag, so that British ships could claim only the rights of aliens in the harbours of the Atlantic and Pacific, or even under an independent flag, when they could enjoy only the rights of neutrals, the change would mean a complete revolution in the conditions under which British commerce is protected, and the influence of the nation maintained on the two oceans.
There is, again, a military as well as a naval aspect from which to regard Canada's geographical relation to the Empire.
{120}
The energy of the Canadian people has within a few years linked together the Pacific and Atlantic frontages of the Dominion by a great railway system. The new line has the advantage of being shorter than any other transcontinental route, and crosses the Rocky Mountains at a level 1500 feet below any line further south. The anticipated obstacle of snow blockade in the mountain district has been effectually overcome; in the Eastern or Intercolonial section, where alone this difficulty recurs from drifting snow, it is being reduced to a minimum. Practically it now amounts to the possibility of one or two days' delay twice or thrice during the winter months, and apparently even this might be obviated by the more liberal use of snow-sheds. A winter often passes without any obstruction worth mentioning. The line is unquestionably the most effective among those which cross the American continent. It has enabled English letters to reach Japan in twenty-one days instead of the forty required by the old routes. Military authorities pronounce it a valuable addition to the Empire's means of communication with the East. Its climatic advantage over the Cape of Good Hope and Suez Canal routes at some seasons of the year may yet add strength to its other recommendations. Compared with these routes it is also the safest, since furthest removed from the possibility of European attack. Of its military efficiency there can be no reasonable doubt. The manager of the Canada Pacific Railway told me that his company had made representations {121} to the Imperial Government that it would undertake to transport men in blocks of 5000 from troop-ships at Halifax to troop-ships at Vancouver within seven days. His statement is justified by the fact that a single train has already carried 600 marines and blue-jackets with their officers from the Pacific to the Atlantic within that time. Such trains can be indefinitely multiplied. Thus a squadron at Vancouver could be reinforced from Portsmouth in about a fortnight by this route, a squadron in the China Seas in a little more than three weeks. A fifty days' voyage in the first case by Cape Horn, a forty days' voyage in the latter by the Suez Canal, has hitherto been the rule. Such facts illustrate the greatness of the changes which are taking place in the conditions of our naval defence. The swift steamships which complete the Eastern connection are constructed for immediate transformation in case of necessity into armed cruisers for the transport of troops and for the protection of the commerce which they are themselves creating. Supplemented by ships of a corresponding character on the Atlantic, such a route might in a national emergency prove an immense addition to the military resources of the Empire, and especially for the defence of India. The mere fact of its existence adds to the nation's military prestige, and the consequent hesitation of any other power in making attack.
A word should be added about Canada's geographical relation to the telegraphic system of the {122} Empire. The existing lines of communication between the United Kingdom and the Australasian colonies and India have never yet been tested by the chances of a European war. In all cases they pass over foreign countries or through shallow seas whence they could be easily fished up and cut. What an entire break of this connection would mean in the commercial world may be judged from the fact that even now more than a thousand pounds a day are spent on cablegrams between Britain and the Australasian colonies alone.
What it would mean in the emergencies of war may be left to the imagination. The panic caused in Australia a few years since by an accidental break in the line at a time when war with Russia seemed imminent clearly proved the importance of the question.
These considerations sufficiently indicate the immense advantage and greater security which would come from an alternative route across Canada. The case was clearly stated by Mr. Sandford Fleming, the distinguished Canadian engineer, in an address to the Colonial Conference of 1887, to which he was a delegate: 'The western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway—Vancouver—is in telegraphic communication with London. Communications have passed between London and Vancouver, and replies returned within a few minutes. From Vancouver cables may be laid to Australasia by way of Hawaii or they may be laid from one British island to {123} another, and thus bring New Zealand and all the Australasian colonies directly into telegraphic connection with Great Britain, without passing over any soil which is not British, and by passing only through seas as remote as possible from any difficulties which may arise in Europe.
'Again, India can be reached from Australasia by the lines of the Eastern Telegraphic Company; South Africa can be reached through the medium of the Eastern and South African Company: and thus, by supplying the one link wanting, the Home Government will have the means provided to telegraph to every important British colony and dependency around the circumference of the globe, without approaching Europe at any point.'
The advantages, commercial and military, of a line of communication thus isolated and national, as compared with those which pass through or near the political storm-centres of Europe, are too obvious to require elaboration. Since 1887 a survey of this route has been going on, though far too slowly, under the direction of the Admiralty; groups of islands useful for operating the line have been annexed, and the laying of the cable seems only to depend on a more general recognition of its national necessity.
What has now been said indicates roughly Canada's geographical relation to the question of a united oceanic empire, of which she may fairly be regarded as the key-stone. What is next to be considered is {124} her relation to the great state which lies along her southern border, and which divides with her about equally the bulk of the North American continent. Here our study of the map must go hand in hand with the study of Canadian history.
A series of great lakes and rivers, and, for the rest, astronomical or arbitrary boundary lines, constitute the only geographical divisions between the United States and Canada. The political and moral line of separation is due to the fact that more than a century ago the colonies which formed the germ of the United States revolted and threw off their connection with Great Britain; those which formed the nucleus of Canada elected to remain united with the mother-land and to work out their political destiny in accordance with British institutions.
The geographical boundary, like those which divide many other nations, seems indefinite and artificial to the mere student of maps; it has been engraved deeply enough in the hearts of Canadian people. It had to be defended in 1775, and once more in the war of 1812, at much expense of life and treasure. Crossing it in 1783 and succeeding years, the persecuted Loyalists of the American Revolution found safety and freedom under the British flag[1]. Again it {125} had to be defended from the Fenians organized in 1866 on American soil. Fishing disputes and boundary disputes, embittered by Canadian dissatisfaction with the methods of American diplomacy, have kept attention fixed upon the line of national demarcation. Still more sharply has it been defined by national habits of thought. South of the line, for at least three-quarters of a century after the Revolution, on a thousand fourth of July platforms dislike and hatred of all things British have been studiously inculcated. Even now an appeal to anti-British feeling may decide the fate of a Presidential election, and has been the winning trick of party politics. North of the line, at every public gathering and on every public holiday up to the present moment, loyalty to the British nationality for which such sacrifices were made, and allegiance to institutions which have borne thoroughly the test of application in a new country, are recognized as of the very essence of the popular life. The mere suspicion that these principles were being trifled with by a few erratic and irresponsible members of a great and otherwise perfectly loyal political party has excluded that party from power for a period almost beyond the limit of political experience in British countries. It is scarcely possible to imagine conditions under which communities kindred in race, language, and {126} literature could have had a more decisive and divergent bias given to their history, to national traditions and enthusiasms, to everything that lies at the roots of individual political life. They have prevailed decisively against contiguity, against commercial intercourse, social intercourse, literary intercourse, against a considerable interchange of population. Those who know best the passions which control the popular mind in Canada are fixed in the belief that the retention of a political individuality independent of the United States has become the touchstone of Canadian national honour.
To understand why this is so we must recall and account for one primary fact, remarkable enough in itself and probably unique in history. We can easily understand that it requires no very marked natural boundary to form the line of division between nations which differ in language, religion, and descent, as in the case of European states. But in America we see that an almost purely artificial line of division has for more than a century been drawn across the breadth of a continent, and between two peoples who speak the same language, study the same literature, and are without any decisive distinctions of religious creed. There has been a great drawing together between the United States and Canada, as between England and Canada, during the last twenty-five years, but it is no greater in the one case than the other, and proceeds on social and literary, not on political lines. Evidently there {127} is in addition to the geographical line some fundamental principle or fact which separates the two countries.
The same profound national convulsion which gave birth to the United States gave birth to the real life of Canada as well. As much principle and as much self-sacrifice were involved in the act of the Loyalists who gave to British Canada its peculiar character as in the struggles of the Revolutionists who founded the American Union. For what he believed a great principle, the Revolutionist broke down an old loyalty, cut his ties with the past, and engaged in the battle for independence. The Loyalist, on the other hand, with an abiding faith in the institutions of his mother-land, not to be shaken by the single mistake of a king, a minister, or a parliament, elected to stand by the losing side, to depend upon constitutional agitation to secure the full political liberty he too desired, and so sacrificed his all to retain his connection with the past, and came to Canada. No victory that Britain ever won by land or sea is more worthy to be blazoned on the pages' of her history than the loyal devotion of that great body of men and women, who, refusing to abjure their ancient allegiance, after the Revolutionary war, gave up their homes, their professions, and all that made life comfortable, crossed over into what was then a forest wilderness, and built up those Canadian provinces which have since grown into a great British confederation.
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Who will venture to say that the faith of the Loyalist has not been as fully justified as that of the Revolutionist? American institutions have not developed any higher forms of political or religious freedom than those which are found in Canada and in other colonies of the Empire today under British institutions. They have not produced a higher tone of public morals or a greater purity of social life. They have not even diminished the risk of great national convulsion. They have not made impossible the oppression or abuse of inferior races, black, red, or yellow. They have not rendered statesmanship more noble and unselfish, justice more incorruptible, human life more sacred, domestic ties more holy, the people more God-fearing. I do not believe that there is a Canadian from one end of the Dominion to the other who honestly believes that American institutions have equalled, much less surpassed, his own in anyone of these particulars. If these are the things which ennoble a nation—if these are marks of true success—the descendants of the Loyalists have no reason to regret the choice which their ancestors made at the time of the Revolutionary war.
The strain under which that choice was made, and the courageous loyalty which inspired it, have never had the recognition throughout the Empire which they deserved. One English historian, however, has done justice to the United Empire Loyalists. Mr. Lecky says: 'There were brave and honest men {129} in America; who were proud of the great and free Empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude all the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the Crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence, and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was, at least, as worthy as that for which Washington had fought.'
That ideal was the conception of a United Empire.
How profoundly this great Loyalist tradition, reinforced as it has been by many other considerations and circumstances, has affected Canadian life, can be gauged only by the actual state of Canadian feeling. Mr. Goldwin Smith has spared no endeavour to prove that the assimilation of Canadian and American sentiment is well-nigh complete. Let us, instead of consulting his imaginative statements, study the actual and quite recent expressions of representative public men and bodies.
Commencing in Eastern Canada, we find Attorney-General Longley, of Nova Scotia, a pronounced {130} opponent of the present Dominion Government, who in past times has seemed to approach very nearly to the advocacy of annexation, now writing in the Fortnightly for March, 1891: 'There is still a deep-seated objection in the minds of a large majority of the people of Canada to union with the United States. It may be unphilosophical, it may be irrational, but it exists. … It is not very easy to blot out a century of history in a day, and the record of the past hundred years has had a constant tendency to confirm British Americans in their devotion to British as against American interests. … It is simply not a practical solution of the future of Canada to suggest political union with the United States, because the preponderating majority of the people will not hear of it. Time is the great miracle worker and may change all this; but we must speak of things as they are. No material considerations will induce the Canadian people at present to accept political union with the United States.'
Archbishop O'Brien, also a Nova Scotian, and the most representative and influential Roman Catholic of Eastern Canada, has in many public utterances expressed his conviction that annexation to the United States would involve for Canada moral damage and political degradation.
New Brunswick, out of its sixteen Parliamentary representatives, had in the last Parliament one whose attitude was ambiguous, since as an editor he seemed to advocate, as a politician he abjured, the idea of {131} annexation. Journalistic ability of a high order and the fact that he represented a commercial constituency having closer trade connection with the New England ports than any other Canadian town made tenable for a time this anomalous position. A decisive vote in the last election left him out of public life, and thus deprived Mr. Goldwin Smith of perhaps the only illustration of his claim that the advocacy of annexation does not exclude from the Dominion Parliament.
Passing on to Quebec we find Mr. Mercier, till lately the local French Canadian leader, hastening to supplement, as he not long since did in Paris to a Times correspondent, an expression of opposition to Imperial Federation by the statement that there is 'no party in Canada … in favour of annexation to the United States.' In Ontario we find Mr. Blake, the strongest man of the Liberal party, withdrawing from public life because he thought he discovered, in the policy of his political friends, a tendency towards annexation. This, at least, is the interpretation which suggests itself to the ordinary reader of his published explanation. The repudiation of any desire for annexation was general, vehement, and doubtless sincere, on the part of the more conspicuous Liberal leaders against whom it had been charged.
Mr. Mowat, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, has lately written a letter for publication, in which he says: 'There are in most counties a few annexationists, {132} in some counties more than in others; but the aggregate in the Dominion, I am sure, is small when compared with the aggregate population. The great majority of our people, I believe and trust, are not prepared to hand over this great Dominion to a foreign nation for any present commercial consideration which may be proposed. We love our Sovereign and are proud of our status as British subjects. The Imperial authorities have refused nothing in the way of self-government which our representatives have asked for. … To the United States and its people we are all most friendly. We recognize the advantages which would go to both them and us from extended trade relations, and we are willing to go as far in that direction as shall not involve, now or in the future, political union; but there Canadians of every party have hitherto drawn the line. … North America is amply large enough for two independent nations, and two friendly nations would be better for both populations than one nation embracing the whole continent.' In another formal statement of the policy of the Liberal party in Canada, Mr. Mowat has said: 'We are as much attached to our nation as the people of the United States are to theirs. The attachment to their nation does our neighbours honour, and intelligent men amongst them cannot regard otherwise our attachment to our nation. As no commercial, or other material advantage, real or supposed, would induce the people of the United States to change their allegiance, so neither, I hope, {133} will the prospect of some material advantage induce Canadians to change their allegiance to the Empire. … For the Liberal party or any important section of it to favour political union with the United States would be death to all hope of Liberal ascendancy in the Councils of the Dominion.'
Going still further West to the prairie regions and British Columbia, hitherto relied upon by Mr. Goldwin Smith for producing a population free from the political traditions and prejudices of the East, we find a compact vote recorded for a Government which makes the maintenance of British connection the corner-stone of its policy, and a chief ground of appeal to the constituencies.
Lastly, we come back to the Dominion Parliament itself. There, in 1890, Liberal and Conservative, Frenchman and Englishman alike, by an absolutely unanimous vote, given with the avowed object of silencing discussion upon the point, united in declaring their unwavering faith in the advantage for Canada of its existing national connection. Mr. Smith claims that geography is too strong for national sentiment, but these are the hard facts which he has to confront in Canada at the end of more than a century of her separate existence. Evidence could scarcely be more conclusive that the main facts are those to which he resolutely shuts his eyes.
The expressions which I have given are those of moderate and distinctly representative men, but there is a deeper passion which must be taken into account.
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Could annexation under any circumstances be effected peacefully and at the ballot-box? I doubt it. If a day should ever come when a bare majority of Canadians voted for annexation, would such a decision be accepted by the minority? To many it would mean Revolution and would be treated as such. It must be remembered that nationality is based on feelings which often lie too deep for mere argument or discussion. In all ages of the world it has been a fighting issue, a question on which minorities yielded only on compulsion. Against mere numbers, moreover, intensity of passion and depth of conviction weigh heavily. I have never heard the question openly discussed, and express an opinion upon it with some diffidence, but to me it seems certain that only coercion would make a very large and influential section of Canadian population submit to the changes which annexation would involve. And I think such a minority would be justified in the eyes of all who place honour and devotion to lofty national tradition before material gain.
Living close to the United States, Canadians can see many practical reasons, outside of sentimental ones, why they should not commit the fortunes of their country to an alliance with those of the great republic. Assuming commercial advantage, the political objections might well seem decisive as a counterbalance. The price which the States have to pay for their wonderful career of prosperity is not yet clear. The amazing flood of immigration with which {135} it has been attended is steadily diluting the Anglo-Saxon element and diminishing the relative influence of the native American. A well-known Mayor of Chicago not long since outlined for me the elements of the population over which his municipal rule extended. The analysis would form a curious study for those who would forecast the American type of the next century: A recent event has revealed the fact that America's population includes a great mass of Italians, little in sympathy with the institutions under which they live, and reinforced by emigrants who crowd every steamer that leaves the Mediterranean to cross the Atlantic.
I lately heard a representative American writer and thinker in England say that in his judgment the Irish question was becoming a more disturbing factor in American politics and a more difficult one to deal with, than it has been for Great Britain. Of the value of this sincerely held opinion an outsider cannot perhaps form a just estimate, but we know that a split in Tammany may practically decide a Presidential election, and a Canadian may fairly think that any problem of race or creed with which he has to deal is not more perplexing.
There still remains the race issue in the South. The war of Secession settled the slavery question: it left the negro question as a dead weight upon the future. Thoughtful Americans themselves are among the first to confess that they have not yet seriously attempted to grapple with it. In the first outburst {136} of generosity, or as a move in the game of party politics, the franchise was given along with liberty, and the result no one as yet foresees. Clearly the country has to face the prospect of a steadily consolidating zone of black population stretching far across the continent. Should the Dominion be annexed to the United States all the voting weight of Canada within the union would for a generation to come scarcely balance this single negro element of America's population, supposing that, in accordance with Canadian ideas of political justice, the negroes should be allowed (as they are not now) to exercise their legal right.
The violence and insecurity of life which have marked the settlement of the West, and still prevail over whole States in the South, are unknown in Canada. People ask why lynch law, as little known in new British countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as it is in Britain itself, is still a common phenomenon in the administration of American justice. Canada has managed a large Indian population with little serious difficulty; her neighbours during the same years have been engaged in a series of wars of extermination, apparently the outcome for the most part of maladministration in Indian affairs. The confusion of marriage and divorce laws throughout the various states has become a serious evil, for which no remedy has yet been devised. If Canadians have sometimes to wrestle with political corruption, they at least do so resolutely and {137} effectively, while there is a widespread belief that among their neighbours it is a permanent and accepted factor in party government.
These points are not dwelt upon in a spirit of petty criticism, but it seems fair to mention them as facts which influence powerfully Canadian judgment in forming an opinion on the comparative merits of the political systems which they see working side by side.
One other consideration beyond that of commercial advantage has often been thrust upon Canadians as a reason why they should seek annexation. They are told that so long as they remain politically connected with Britain they will be exposed to the chances of war with the United States, since the Dominion would naturally be made the first point of attack should differences arise between the two countries. It is urged that resistance to such an attack would be useless and absurd, and that Canada's only guarantee of safety from future subjugation and the military occupation of the country is to form as quickly as she can and on the best terms she can, a civil union with the power that thus threatens her.
If the appeal to mere commercial advantage seemed mercenary, this appeal to cowardice seems base. Certainly it is one which has never made any impression on the Canadian mind. Perhaps this is mere recklessness. It might be argued, however, that 4000 miles of frontier are as perplexing for attack as for defence. Canadians remember that in 1812 they successfully faced a corresponding danger when the odds were as {138} much against them, and numbers as disproportionate, as they are today. They remember that to crush the Southern States, fighting without outside help, required the most expensive and destructive war of modern times, prolonged over renewed campaigns. They know at any rate that the task of subduing them is one which would not be lightly undertaken. But picture the worst that such a war could bring: defeat, military occupation, complete subjugation. If war between Britain and the United States be, as is claimed, a possibility of the future, would not each and all of these be for Canadians infinitely preferable to placing themselves in such a position that; having abandoned a country which they loved and joined themselves to a country which they feared, they would by that act be pledged to use their arms, their means, their collective forces as a people, against the land that gave them birth, that had extended over them the strong shield of her protection through a hundred years of struggling infancy, and had freely given them the best she had to give of perfect freedom and noble institutions?
I am satisfied that this argument alone is quite sufficient to make annexation to the United States a moral impossibility for the Canadian people. They may join heartily in every process by which their mother-land and the great republic are drawn more closely together; they may even be in no small degree the link which binds them together in friendly feeling. But to expose themselves to the possibility of hostile {139} conflict with that mother-land for the sake of a temporary commercial advantage or from motives of cowardice would make them incur the contempt of the people they leave and the contempt of the people they join. In the long run it may be taken for granted that the path of commercial and every other prosperity will be found along the path of national honour. That national honour is looked upon as the issue at stake there can be no reasonable doubt.
In considering more closely the question of commercial advantage it may in the outset be remarked that no truly noble individual life, much less any truly noble national life, was ever yet built up on principles and purposes entirely mercenary. The landmarks in history to which the human heart everywhere turns with a thrill of instinctive pride are the periods when nations have forgotten, for a time, self-interest and the love of gain, and in the glow of patriotic enthusiasm have made great sacrifices from motives of principle, affection, honour, and loyalty, British Canada owes its foundation to such an outburst of lofty spirit. The United States themselves were founded, as a nation, upon what seemed at the time an utter defiance of commercial advantage, and the heroic periods of that country, as of every other, the periods which gave birth to all that is noblest and purest in it, were not the times of its wealth and luxury, but the times of its self-denial, suffering, effort, and sacrifice. Prosperity must be an incident of noble national life; not the sole foundation on which it is built.
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Again, while it would be absurd to undervalue material prosperity, we must constantly remember that its highest value consists as much in the discipline of the powers required for its acquisition as in the acquisition or possession itself. This must be as true of nations as daily experience shows it to be in the case of individuals. When Canadians are told that they must look to political union with the United States for any increase of commercial prosperity, and that such a connection will at once draw them into a tide of greater business energy, I cannot but think that a prosperity purchased by such means is obtained by the sacrifice of that which gives prosperity its greatest worth. Speaking as a Canadian to Canadian audiences, I have sometimes put the argument in this way: 'We have a country with enormous capacity for development. The field is large enough and varied enough to satisfy the greatest energy and every form of it. The consolidation of a national strength, the linking together of our widespread provinces by railway systems, the opening up of our great North-West, seem to have removed the chief obstacles which have hitherto stood in our way. Under such circumstances, or under any circumstances, would it not be infinitely more worthy of us, would it not be a far better national training and discipline, to set ourselves resolutely to work to supply that in which we are deficient, rather than to seek it ignominiously at the hands of our neighbours? Can it be true that we have not the strength of brain or hand to wrest from nature the {141} success and prosperity which others have won? If we have not, then let us not add to our weakness a spirit of mean dependence.'
Looking at the question under aspects such as these, I find it impossible to conceive that Canadians, who have for more than a century received their national impulse and development from a political system which they believe the best in the world, for which they have continued to profess the most devoted regard, and to which they are tied by a thousand bonds of affectionate sympathy, will deliberately, in cold blood, and for commercial reasons only, dissolve that connection, and join themselves to a state with the history and traditions of which they have little sympathy, and to whose form of government they object. To take such a course would indicate an extraordinary degradation of public sentiment.
When, therefore, I am told that geography and commercial tendencies are strong, I can only reply that the bias of national life and loyalty to the spiritual forces which give a people birth are stronger still. A sensitive regard for public honour is infinitely stronger.
But even the question of commercial advantage has two aspects.
Comparing the relative advantages of the United States and the British Empire we find that with the former lies that of continental isolation—a position so secure, peopled as the country now is, that no external power could hope to shake it. Attack might be annoying and detrimental, but by no means fatal, {142} for the chief dependence of the country is not upon external trade. Even a blockade of all its ports would stimulate internal activity, for the United States are almost self-sufficing in the matter of production, and manufacturing industry would have the whole union entirely to itself. A very remarkable and advantageous position we must admit this to be, freeing the country from external dangers to which other nations are subject, and so leaving it in a better position to grapple with those vast internal problems of race and colour which confront it.
Very different indeed is the advantage which Britain enjoys. She has, however, no reason to envy the great Republic. Instead of continental compactness she has world-wide diffusion—precisely that kind of diffusion which satisfies the necessities of countries which depend, and must always to a considerable degree depend, upon external trade. It would be too much perhaps to say that at the present moment the British Empire possesses the same security on the ocean that the United States have on their continent, but it is not too much to affirm that with her command of the strongest maritime positions of the world, her backing of vigorous and growing populations, and her resources in money and trained men for naval equipment, she could soon become so. This is the kind of security which Britain requires with her vast outflow of merchandise—her inflow of food and raw material. It is the kind of security needed by countries like Australia, New Zealand, or South {143} Africa, which have an enormous export of special products for which the character of the country is specially adapted. If no question of national honour were involved, and if Canada had to make a choice purely upon grounds of national security between what is offered to her from connection with the United States and with the Empire, the decision would depend upon whether she aspired to great commercial connections or would be content with merely continental relations. It is certain that if the United States ever regain control of their own carrying trade, or if by the development of manufacturing energy they are led to look largely to outside markets, they will feel more and more the limitations imposed by a purely continental position. Canada has at the present time large maritime interests. Her great length of sea coast, the productive fisheries east and, west, the facility for ship-building given by her forests, have stimulated her maritime activity to such an extent that in tonnage of shipping she now ranks fourth among the nations of the world, counting the United Kingdom as one. Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of the world, taking part in the carrying trade. Several great steam-ship lines cross the Atlantic, another connects the Pacific coast with Japan and China—a line is projected to Australasia—others carry on trade with the eastern and western coasts of America and with the West Indies. The instincts and conditions which have made British people a maritime and trading race are renewed in {144} the Dominion. Canada's interest is to retain the national connection which gives her commerce the best opportunities, her fleets the surest protection in all parts of the world.
The Canadian shipmaster or trader knows that at ports all over the world, at Hong Kong and Calcutta, at Malta or Melbourne, at the Cape or Auckland, in a word, at all the great centres of the world's ocean commerce, he can claim the protection of the national flag, he has a right to apply to the British consul, he can rely on the prestige of the British name. These are rights of which the Canadian knows the value. They are rights which he is not likely to relinquish, for they have been honestly won, first by retaining his allegiance at the price of much sacrifice in the revolution of 1776, and then by steady persistence in that allegiance at all costs through more than a century. He knows they are rights that no other nation can give him in equal degree.
It is in trade relations, however, that Canada's interest is supposed to look away from Great Britain or the rest of the Empire, and towards the United States. Twenty years ago the American Republic entered upon its policy of excluding as far as possible the products of other countries, and among them those of Canada, by a high protective tariff. That policy has been steadily maintained until it has reached a climax in the McKinley tariff. It had previously forced a protective policy upon Canada itself. It seems clear that the Dominion has suffered {145} to some extent commercially by this exclusion from the markets of her own continent, by the resolute determination of their neighbours that Canadians shall not, as Canadians, have any share in the prosperity of the United States. That she has gained in energy, self-reliance, and national purpose is equally clear to anyone who attempts to measure the splendid and successful efforts which she has since confederation and under this exclusion made at self-development. That the moral gain infinitely outweighs the commercial loss, I, for one, firmly believe. But there are those who argue that for the commercial advantage which it is anticipated would flow from union with the United States, the continental independence of the country, its historical traditions, its political institutions, its nationality, should be abandoned. In Great Britain itself there are found many who assume as a matter of course that commercial attraction will inevitably lead to the political absorption of the Dominion into the United States. I believe that the opinion is a mistaken one. The grounds upon which it is based deserve examination. Let it be remembered that no one now ventures to bring forward in support of this proposition any argument based on the superior freedom or excellence of American institutions, social or political. The day for that is past. We can assert, without fear of contradiction, that the condition of the self-governing colonies of Britain finds no parallel in the world in making government an immediate reflection of the {146} popular will, and so in giving the utmost possible freedom and weight of influence to the individual citizen. When Lord Dufferin told an American audience at Chicago that Canadians would not breathe freely in a country where the Executive was placed for years together beyond the reach of the popular will, and was not under the constant supervision of the Legislative bodies, he indicated a vital difference which distinguishes the form of popular government in British countries from the American system, a difference which colonists think is all in favour of the former. If the government of any self-ruling dependency of England is bad, the fault lies in the character of the constituency, not in the form of government.
The question, then, is purely one of commercial advantage, a certain supposed and possibly temporary per-centage of trade gain which Canadians would secure by abjuring their national allegiance.
Grounds are not wanting for the belief that the inevitable tendency of several very great trade interests of Canada is more towards Great Britain and some of the British dependencies than towards the United States. From their position and physical character Canada and the United States must in many ways be rival producers. Both are great grain and cattle raising countries. Both wish their surplus of agricultural productions to reach the consuming millions of the old world, or the tropical countries like the West Indies where they may be exchanged for articles of {147} use or luxury. Certain it is that the United States now export to Great Britain many millions of pounds' worth of those very products which Canada sends in smaller quantities to the States. Such a fact scarcely bears out the assertion that the United States furnish the natural market of Canada. It rather suggests that better organization for transport and greater commercial enterprize would make the English market the more valuable of the two for Canada.
But while urging this view of ultimate trade tendencies there is no need to underestimate the present advantage and convenience which Canada would derive from the freest possible access to American markets. These may be at once admitted, the only qualification being that Canada cannot afford to purchase advantage and convenience at the price of national dishonour or humiliation. Let us remember, however, that advantage and convenience are not confined to one side.