THE POLITICAL DESTINY OF CANADA. 



comparative indifference to the objects in which 

 Canada is most concerned. A Canadian periodi- 

 cal some time ago had a remarkable paper by a 

 native writer, showing that the whole series of 

 treaties made by Great Britain with the United 

 States had been a continuous sacrifice of the 

 claims of Canada. It was not, assuredly, that 

 Great Britain wanted either force or spirit to 

 fight for her own rights and interests, but that 

 she felt that Canadian rights and interests were 

 not her own. Her rulers could not have induced 

 her people to go to war for an object for which 

 they cared so little, and had so little reason to 

 care, as a frontier line in North America. An- 

 other illustration of the difference between the 

 British and the Canadian point of view was 

 afforded by the recent dispute about the Extra- 

 dition Treaty : England was disposed to be stiff 

 and punctilious, having comparatively little to 

 fear from the suspension of the treaty ; while to 

 Canada, bordering on the United States, the dan- 

 ger was great, and the renewal of the treaty was 

 a vital necessity before which punctiliousness 

 gave way. One object there is connected with 

 the American Continent for which the British 

 aristocracy, if we may judge by the temper it 

 showed and the line it took toward the American 

 Republic at the time of the rebellion, would be 

 not unwilling to run the risk of war. But that 

 object is one with regard to which the interests 

 of British aristocracy and those of Canadian 

 democracy not only are not identical, but point 

 directly opposite ways. With regard to eco- 

 nomical questions, the divergence is, if possible, 

 still clearer than with regard to diplomatic ques- 

 tions. The economic interests of Canada must 

 evidently be those of her own continent, and to 

 that continent, by all the economic forces, she 

 must be and visibly is drawn. Her currency, 

 whatever may be the name and superscription on 

 the coin, is American, and it is the sure symbol 

 of her real connection. In the British manu- 

 facturer the Canadian manufacturer sees a rival ; 

 and Canada at this moment is the scene of a 

 protectionist movement led, curiously enough, by 

 those " Conservative " politicians who are loudest 

 in their professions of loyalty to Great Britain. 



3. More momentous than even the divergence 

 of interest is the divergence of political charac- 

 ter between the citizen of the Old and the citizen 

 of the New World. We speak, of course, not 

 of the French-Canadians, between whom and the 

 people of Great Britain the absence of political 

 affinity is obvious, but of the British communi- 

 ties in North America. The colonization of the 



New World, at least that English portion of it 

 which was destined to give birth to the ruling 

 and moulding power, was not merely a migration, 

 but an exodus ; it was not merely a local exten- 

 sion of humanity, but a development ; it not only 

 peopled another continent, but opened a new era. 

 The curtain rose not for the old drama with fresh 

 actors, but for a fresh drama on a fresh scene. 

 A long farewell was said to feudalism when the 

 New England colony landed, with the rough draft 

 of a written constitution, which embodied a so- 

 cial compact and founded government not on 

 sacred tradition or divine right, but on reason 

 and the public good. The more one sees of so- 

 ciety in the New World, the more convinced one 

 is that its structure essentially differs from that 

 of society in the Old World, and that the feudal 

 element has been eliminated completely and for- 

 ever. English aristocracy, fancying itself, as all 

 established systems fancy themselves, the normal 

 and final state of humanity, may cling to the 

 belief that the new development is a mere aber- 

 ration, and that dire experience will in time 

 bring it back to the ancient path. There are 

 people, it seems, who persuade themselves that 

 America is retrograding toward monarchy and 

 church establishments. No one who knows the 

 Americans can possibly share this dream. Mon- 

 archy has found its way to the New World only in 

 the exceptional case of Brazil, to which the royal 

 family of the mother-country itself migrated, and 

 where after all the emperor is rather an hereditary 

 president than a monarch of the European type. 

 In Canada, government being parliamentary and 

 " constitutional," monarchy is the delegation of 

 a shadow ; and any attempt to convert the shad- 

 ow into a substance, by introducing a dynasty 

 with a court and civil list, or by reinvesting the 

 viceroy with personal power, would speedily re- 

 veal the real nature of the situation. Pitt pro- 

 posed to extend to Canada what as a Tory minis- 

 ter he necessarily regarded as the blessings of 

 aristocracy ; but the plant refused to take root in 

 the alien soil. No peerage ever saw the light in 

 Canada; the baronetage saw the light and no 

 more ; of nobility there is nothing now but a 

 knighthood very small in number, and upon 

 which the Pacific-Railway scandal has cast so 

 deep a shadow that the home Government, though 

 inclined that way, seems shy of venturing on 

 more creations. Hereditary wealth and the cus- 

 tom of primogeniture, indispensable supports of 

 an aristocracy, are totally wanting in a purely 

 industrial country, where, let the law be what it 

 might, natural justice has always protested against 



