8 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



in doing. It was the interest of the people to ac- 

 cept the union, as the flood of prosperity which 

 followed its acceptance clearly showed. In the 

 case of Scotland, the interest of the people tri- 

 umphed at last, and it will probably triumph at 



i 



last in Canada. 



Such, we say, are the chief forces that make 

 for the existing connection ; and we repeat that 

 they appear to be secondary, and, for the most 

 part, transient. United, all these strands may 

 make a strong cable ; but, one by one they will 

 give way, and the cable will cease to hold. This 

 conviction is quite consistent with the admission 

 that the connectionist sentiment is now dominant, 

 especially in Ontario ; that in Ontario it almost 

 exclusively finds expression on the platform and 

 in the press ; and that the existence of any other 

 opinions can only be inferred from reticence, or 

 discovered by private intercourse. A visitor may 

 thus be led to believe and to report that the at- 

 tachment of the whole population to the present 

 system is unalterable, and that the connection 

 must endure forever. Those who have opportu- 

 nities of looking beneath the surface may, at 

 the same time, have grounds for thinking that, 

 on economical subjects at least, the people have 

 already entered on a train of thought which will 

 lead them to a different goal. 



What has been the uniform course of events 

 down to the present time ? Where are the 

 American dependencies of Spain, Portugal, 

 France, and Holland ? Those on the continent, 

 with unimportant exceptions, are gone, and those 

 in the islands are going ; for few suppose that 

 Spain can keep Cuba very long. Of the English 

 colonies on the continent, the mass, and those 

 that have been long founded, have become inde- 

 pendent ; and every one now sees, what clear- 

 sighted men saw at the time, that the separation 

 was inevitable, and must soon have been brought 

 about by natural forces, apart from the accidental 

 quarrel. If Canada has been retained, it is by 

 the reduction of imperial supremacy to a form. 

 Self-government is independence ; perfect self- 

 government is perfect independence ; and all the 

 questions that arise between Ottawa and Downing 

 Street, including the recent question about ap- 

 peals, are successively settled in favor of self- 

 government. Diplomatic union between two 

 countries in different hemispheres, with totally 

 different sets of external relations, common re- 

 sponsibility for each other's quarrels, and liability 

 to be involved in each other's wars — these inci- 

 dents of dependence remain, and these alone. Is 

 it probable that this last leaf can continue to 



flutter on the bough forever ? Lord Derby some 

 years ago said that everybody knew that Canada 

 must soon be an independent nation. Now he 

 thinks the tide of opinion has turned in favor of 

 imperialism, and he turns with the tide. But 

 what he takes for the turn of the tide may be 

 merely the receding wave ; and he forgets what 

 the last wave swept away. It swept away the 

 military occupation, with all its influences, politi- 

 cal and social. Even since that time the com- 

 mercial unity of the empire has been formally 

 abandoned in the case of the Australian tariffs ; 

 and now the marriage-law of the colonies is clash- 

 ing with that of the mother-country in the British 

 House of Commons. 



It is, perhaps, partly the recoil of feeling from 

 a severence felt to be imminent, as well as the 

 temporary influence of Conservative reaction in 

 England, that has led to the revival in certain 

 quarters, with almost convulsive vehemence, of 

 the plan of imperial confederation. Certainly, if 

 such a plan is ever to be carried into effect, this 

 is the propitious hour. The spirit of aggrandize- 

 ment is in the ascendant, and the colonies are all 

 on good terms with the mother-country. Yet, of 

 the statesmen who dally with the project and 

 smile upon its advocates, not one ventures to take 

 a practical step toward its fulfillment. On the 

 contrary, they are accessory to fresh inroads upon 

 imperial unity, both in the judicial and in the 

 fiscal sphere. Colonial governors talk with im- 

 pressive vagueness of some possible birth cf the 

 imperial future, as though the course of events, 

 which has been hurrying the world through a 

 series of rapid changes for the last century, would 

 now stand still, and impracticable aspirations 

 would become practicable by the mere operation 

 of time ; but no colonial governor or imperial 

 statesman has ventured to tell us, even in the 

 most general way, to what it is that he looks for- 

 ward, how it is to be brought about, or even what 

 dependencies the confederation is to include. It 

 is, therefore, needless to rehearse all the argu- 

 ments against the feasibility of such a scheme. 

 The difficulties which beset the union under the 

 same parliamentary government of two countries 

 in different parts of the world, with different 

 foreign relations, and differing internally in po- 

 litical spirit, would, of course, be multiplied in 

 the case of a union of twenty or thirty countries 

 scattered over the whole globe, bound together by 

 no real tie of common interest, and ignorant of 

 each other's concerns. The first meeting of such 

 a conclave would, we may be sure, develop forces 

 of disunion far stronger than the vajrue sentiment 



