66 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



some other on the question at issue. The United States has had 

 the same difficulty and has met it in part by private organizations 

 which have taken charge of individual public questions such as civil 

 service reform and have either held the parties to their pledges or 

 made it uncomfortable for those who broke them. 



There is no need to be discouraged. Rather is there need to face 

 with better understanding the defects of the last fifty years, that 

 we may not remain complacent about ourselves. Democracies are 

 apt to make thorough cures when once they are aroused and our 

 democracy only needs education in public questions to make efïective 

 the good impulses of its heart. If once it realizes that we are politically 

 ignorant and badly governed, that we trust our affairs in the main 

 to men who cannot rise to the ideals which the nation has before it, 

 the cure may come quickly and thoroughly. There are reassuring 

 signs. To-day, from one end of Canada to the other, there is an 

 aroused public opinion as to the existing patronage system which 

 has friends only among the narrower and baser type of politician. 

 That this system will go in the near future I do not doubt, and its 

 going will clear the air. The petty politician will lose his interest 

 in politics when he finds that they do not bring gifts for himself and 

 his friends, and better men, inspired by a real zeal for public service, 

 will take the places so unworthily filled by some of the present occu- 

 pants. It is necessary to speak plainly. The existing type of Mem- 

 ber of Parliament is not adequate to the needs of the country. As a 

 rule, with, of course, exceptions, it is not able men who are engaged 

 in the tasks of government in Canada. We need to create a new 

 tradition of public service. We must learn how to send big men 

 instead of little men to' Parliament. As it is the people see farther 

 than those whom they send there. 



In such conditions we need courage and faith when we confront 

 the future. Fifty years of union have done much for us. They have 

 changed a colony into a nation, in spirit, if not in technical constitu- 

 tional fact. The thought of Canada has been broadened. Provinces 

 on the Atlantic and on the Pacific are giving serious consideration 

 to each others problems. One notices that remote India now has a 

 part in the thought of Canada which it had not even twenty years 

 ago. One also notices persistently in every Canadian circle the deter- 

 mination that Canada shall become and remain the political equal of 

 Great Britain. So far as Canada, at least, is concerned, the old 

 colonial system is worn out. Free peoples in America will not accept 

 any kind of subordination to free peoples of Europe. They must be 

 equal or they will separate. It is quite certain that the soldier when he 

 returns from the battle fields of Europe will be insistent upon this 



