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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



but interlaced with them, so that at present the 

 road of the Governor-General of Canada, when 

 he visits his Pacific province, lies through the 

 territory of the American Republic. Is it possi- 

 ble to suppose that the slender filament which 

 connects each of these colonies with Downing 

 Street is the thread of a common destiny ? 



In studying Canadian politics, and in attempt- 

 ing to cast the political horoscope of Canada, the 

 first thing to be remembered, though official op- 

 timism is apt to overlook it, is that Canada was a 

 colony not of England but of France, and that 

 between the British of Ontario and the British of 

 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are interposed, 

 in solid and unyielding mass, above a million of 

 unassimilated and politically antagonistic French- 

 men. French Canada is a relic of the historical 

 past preserved by isolation, as Siberian mam- 

 moths are preserved in ice. It is a fragment of 

 the France before the Revolution, less the mon- 

 archy and the aristocracy ; for the feeble parody 

 of French feudalism in America ended with the 

 abolition of the seigniories, which may be re- 

 garded as the final renunciation of feudal ideas 

 and institutions by society in the New World. 

 The French-Canadians are an unprogressive, re- 

 ligious, submissive, courteous, and, though poor, 

 not unhappy people. They would make excellent 

 factory-hands if Canada had a market for her 

 manufactures ; and, perhaps, it is as much due 

 to the climate as to their lack of intelligent in- 

 dustry, that they have a very indifferent reputa- 

 tion as farmers. They are governed by the priest, 

 with the occasional assistance of the notary ; and 

 the Roman Catholic Church may be said to be 

 still established in the province, every Roman 

 Catholic being bound to pay tithes and other ec- 

 clesiastical imposts, though the Protestant minor- 

 ity are exempt. The Church is immensely rich, 

 and her wealth is always growing, so that the 

 economical element which mingled with the relig- 

 ious causes of the Reformation may one day have 

 its counterpart in Quebec. The French-Cana- 

 dians, as we have said, retain their exclusive na- 

 tional character. So far from being absorbed by 

 the British population, or Anglicized by contact 

 with it, they have absorbed and Gallicized the 

 fragments of British population which chance has 

 thrown among them ; and the children of High- 

 land regiments disbanded in Quebec have become 

 thorough Frenchmen, and prefixed Jean Baptiste 

 to their Highland names. For his own Canada 

 the Frenchman of Quebec has something of a 

 patriotic feeling ; for France he has filial affection 

 enough to make his heart beat violently for her 



during a Franco-German War ; for England, it 

 may be safely said, he has no feeling whatever. 

 It is true that he fought against the American in- 

 vaders in the Revolutionary War, and again in 

 1812 ; but then he was animated by his ancient 

 hostility to the Puritans of New England, in the 

 factories of whose descendants he now freely 

 seeks employment. Whether he would enthusi- 

 astically take up arms for England against the 

 Americans at present, the British War-Office, 

 after the experience of the two Fenian raids, can 

 no doubt tell. With Upper Canada, the land of 

 Scotch Presbyterians, Irish Orangemen, and ultra- 

 British sentiment, French Canada, during the 

 union of the two provinces, led an uneasy life ; 

 and she accepted confederation, on terms which 

 leave her nationality untouched, rather as a sev- 

 erance of her special wedlock with her unloved 

 consort than as a measure of North American 

 union. The unabated antagonism between the two 

 races and the two religions was plainly manifested 

 on the occasion of the conflict between the French 

 half-breeds and the British immigrants in Mani- 

 toba, which presented a faint parallel to the con- 

 flict between the advanced posts of slavery and 

 antislavery in Kansas on the eve of the civil war ; 

 Quebec openly sympathizing with Riel and his 

 fellow-insurgents, while Ontario was on fire to 

 avenge the death of Scott. Sir George Cartier 

 might call himself an Englishman speaking 

 French ; but his calling himself so did not make 

 him so ; much less did it extend the character 

 from a political manager, treading the path of 

 ambition with British colleagues, to the mass of 

 his unsophisticated compatriots. The priests 

 hitherto have put their interests into the hands 

 of a political leader, such as Sir George himself, 

 in the same way in which the Irish priests used 

 to put their interests into the hands of O'Connell ; 

 and this leader has made the best terms he could 

 for them and for himself at Ottawa. Nor has it 

 i been difficult to make good terms, since both the 

 political parties bid emulously for the Catholic 

 vote, and, by their interested subserviency to 

 those who wield it, render it impossible for a Lib- 

 eral Catholic party, or a Liberal party of any 

 kind, to make head against priestly influence in 

 Quebec. By preference the priests, as reaction- 

 ists, have allied themselves with the Tory party 

 in the British provinces, and Canada has long 

 witnessed the singular spectacle, witnessed for 

 the first time in England at the last general elec- 

 tion, of Roman Catholics and Orangemen march- 

 ing together to the poll. Fear of contact with an 

 active-minded democracy, and of possible peril 



