22 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and governraent bonuses. The interprovincial trade — a direct result of 

 the federation — is at least $120,000,000 a year. These are some of the 

 most remarkable evidences of material development which Canada has 

 exhibited within fifty years. All those who wish to pursue the subject 

 further need onh^ refer to the official publications ' of the government to 

 see that the fisheries, the timber trade, and the agricultural products of 

 Canada have all increased in the same ratio, notwithstanding commercial 

 crises, bad harvests, and depression produced in certain branches of in- 

 dustry bj^ the policy pursued by the United States for some years 

 towards the Canadian Dominion. When we consider that the United 

 States has received the great bulk of immigration for half a century, and 

 that it is only quite recently that a deep interest has been taken in the 

 development of the Dominion by the people of Europe, it is remarkable 

 that in every branch of trade and industry so steady a progress has been 

 made during the reign. 



X. 



In a new country like Canada one cannot look for the high culture 

 and intellectual standard of the old communities of Europe. But there is 

 even now in Canada an intellectual activity which, if it has not yet pro- 

 duced a distinct literature, has assumed a practical and useful form, and 

 must, sooner or later, with the increase of wealth and leisure, take a 

 higher range, and display more of the beauty and grace of literary 

 productions of world-wide interest and fame. The mental outfit of the 

 people comjjares favourably with that of older countries. The universities 

 of Canada — McGill, in Montreal, Laval, in Quebec, Queen's, in Kingston, 

 Dalhousie, in Halifax, and Trinity and Toronto Universities in Toronto — 

 stand deservedly high in the opinion of men of learning in the Old 

 World and the United States, whilst the grammar and common school 

 system in the English-speaking provinces is creditable to the keen 

 sagacity and public spirit of the people, who are not behind their cousins 

 of New England in this particular. We have already seen the low con- 

 dition of education sixty years ago — only one in fifteen at school ; but 

 now there are almost a million of pupils in the educational institutions of 

 the country, or one in five, at a cost to the people of upwards of $10,000,- 

 000, contributed for the most part by the taxpayers of the different 

 municipalities in connection with which the educational sj'^stem is worked 

 out. In Ontario the class of schoolhouses is exceptionalh' good, and the 

 apparatus excellent, and the extent to which the people tax themselves 

 may be ascertained from the fact that the government only contributes 

 annually some $1,512,000 out of a total expenditure of about $4,200,000. 



1 Especially 'The Statistical Year Book, ably compiled by Mr. Johnson, the 

 Dominion statistician. 



