Commercial and Political Events of Forty Years 51 



own country. Doubtless it is a movement similar to this which 

 may be at the bottom of the general depression and seeming 

 agricultural retrogression in the old district down on Presqu'- 

 Isle Bay; but the subject, now that we have really begun to 

 investigate it historically, is becoming of absorbing interest and 

 I hope we together may determine in what direction this most 

 serious condition, affecting the welfare of our old Province 

 should best turn the energies of her people." 



The business-like grouping of commercial and historical facts 

 made by the man of affairs was a source of intense admiration 

 to the professor, who remarked in rising to go : 



"Well, Mr. Keeler, it is once more the proof of the old scien- 

 tific adage experientia docet, which we now translate into 'It is 

 necessary to experiment in order to learn,' and certainly you 

 old Canadians must have had either great faith for forty years 

 in your future or an intense patriotism like that of the Tyrolese 

 or Swiss for their mountain glens to resist the loadstone of com- 

 mercial advantages and large business attractions, which you 

 have so well illustrated in this picture of the growth of the Amer- 

 ican West. But it does seem, as you say, as if the Old East in 

 Canada is today having the same depleting process repeated, 

 and I wonder if there is to be a forty years' further drain on 

 these old provinces, which have supplied the very essentials not 

 only of men, the primary condition to development, but also 

 of the intellectual, social and political elements in the evolu- 

 tion of the West. We must study this further. Goodnight!" 



