THE POLITICAL DESTINY OF CANADA. 



to their overweening wealth, has also led the [ 

 priesthood to shrink from annexation, though 

 they have not been able to prevent their people 

 from going over the line for better wages, and 

 bringing back with them a certain republican 

 leaven of political and ecclesiastical unrest, 

 which in the end may, perhaps, lead to the verifi- 

 cation of Lord Elgin's remark, that it would be 

 easier to make the French-Canadians Americans 

 than to make them English. Hitherto, however, 

 French Canada has retained, among other heir- 

 looms of the Ancien Regime, the old Gallican 

 Church, the Church of Louis XIV. and of Bos- 

 suet, national, quiet, unaggressive, capable of liv- 

 ing always on sufficiently good terms with the 

 state. But now the scene is changed. Even to 

 French Canada, the most secluded nook of the 

 Catholic world, Ultramontanism has penetrated, 

 with the Jesuit in its van. There is a struggle 

 for ascendency between the Jesuits and the Gal- 

 licans, the citadel of the Gallicans being the 

 Sulpician Seminary, vast and enormously wealthy, 

 which rises over Montreal. The Jesuit has the 

 forces of the hour on his side ; he gains the day ; 

 the bishops fall under his influence, and take his 

 part against the Sulpicians ; the Guibord case 

 marks, distinctly though farcically, the triumph 

 of his principles ; and it is by no means certain 

 that he, a cosmopolitan power playing a great 

 game, will cling to Canadian isolation, and that he 

 will not prefer a junction with his main army in 

 the United States. Assuredly his choice will not 

 be determined by loyalty to England. At all 

 events, his aggressive policy has begun to raise 

 questions calculated to excite the Protestants of 

 the British provinces, which the politicians, with 

 all their arts, will hardly be able to smother, 

 and which will probably put an end to the long 

 torpor of Quebec. The New Brunswick school 

 case points to education as a subject which can 

 scarcely fail soon to give birth to a cause of war. 

 Besides the French, there are in Canada, as we 

 believe we have good authority for saying, about 

 400,000 Irish, whose political sentiments are gen- 

 erally identical with those of the Irish in the 

 mother-country, as any reader of their favorite 

 journals will perceive. Thus, without reckoning 

 a considerable German settlement in Ontario, 

 which by its unimpaired nationality in the heart 

 of the British population attests the weakness of 

 the assimilating forces in Canada compared with 

 those in the United States, or the Americans, who, 

 though not numerous, are influential in the com- 

 mercial centres, we have at once to deduct 1,400,- 

 000 from a total population of less than 4,000,000 



in order to reduce to reality the pictures of uni- 

 versal devotion to England and English interests 

 which are presented by the speeches of official 

 persons, or of persons professing to know Canada, 

 but deriving their idea of her from the same 

 source. 



Confederation, so far, has done nothing to 

 fuse the races, and very little even to unite the 

 provinces. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 

 besides being cut off from Ontario by French 

 Canada, have interests of their own, separate, and 

 in some degree divergent, from those of Ontario, 

 New Brunswick especially being drawn by her 

 commercial interests toward New England. The 

 representatives of each of the smaller provinces 

 form a separate group at Ottawa, giving or with- 

 holding their support to a great extent from pro- 

 vincial considerations. Each of the two political 

 parties has its base in Ontario, which is the field 

 of the decisive battles ; and they can hardly be 

 said to extend to the maritime provinces, much 

 less to Manitoba or to British Columbia. When 

 the Ontarian parties are evenly balanced the 

 smaller provinces turn the scale, and Ontarian 

 leaders are always buying them with " better 

 terms," that is, alterations" of the pecuniary ar- 

 rangements of confederation in their favor, and 

 other inducements, at the sacrifice, of course, of 

 the general interests of the Confederation. From 

 the composition of a cabinet to the composition 

 of a rifle-team, sectionalism is the rule. Con- 

 federation has secured free-trade between the 

 provinces ; what other good it has done it would 

 not be easy to say. Whether it has increased 

 the military strength of Canada is a question for 

 the answer to which we must appeal once more 

 to the British War-Office. Canadians have shown, 

 on more than one memorable occasion, that in 

 military spirit they are not wanting; but they 

 cannot be goaded into wasting their hardl)"-earned 

 money on preparations for a defense which would 

 be hopeless against an invader who will never 

 come. Politically, the proper province of a fed- 

 eral government is the management of external 

 relations, while domestic legislation is the prov- 

 ince of the several states. But a dependency has 

 no external relations ; Canada has not even, like 

 South Africa, a native question, her Indians be- 

 ing perfectly harmless ; and consequently the 

 chief duty of a federal government in Canada is 

 to keep itself in existence by the ordinary agen- 

 cies of party, a duty which it discharges with a 

 vengeance. English statesmen bent on extend- 

 ing to all the colonies what they assume to be 

 the benefits of confederation, should study the 



