552 Our North Land. 



future of Canada. Gentlemen, I believe that Canadians are well 

 able to take care of themselves, of their future, and the outside 

 world had better listen to them instead of promulgating weak and 

 wild theories of its own. But, however uncertain, and, I may add, 

 foolish, may be such forecasts, of one thing we may be sure, which 

 is this, that the country you call Canada, and which your sons and 

 your children's children will be proud to know by that name, is a 

 land which will be a land of power among the nations. Mistress of 

 a zone of territory favourable for the maintenance of a numerous 

 and homogenous white population, Canada must, to judge from the 

 increase in her strength during the past, and from the many and 

 vast opportunities for the growth of that strength in her new Prov- 

 inces in the future, be great and worthy her position on the earth. 

 Affording the best and safest highway between Asia and Europe, 

 she will see traffic from both directed to her coasts. With a hand 

 upon either ocean she will gather from each for the benefit of her 

 hardy millions a large share of the commerce of the world. To the 

 east and to the west she will pour forth of her abundance, her 

 treasures of food and the riches of her mines and of her forests 

 demanded of her by the less fortunate of mankind. I esteem those 

 men favoured indeed who, in however slight a degree, have had the 

 honour or may yet be called upon to take part in the councils of the 

 statesmen who in the early era of her history are moulding this 

 nation's laws in the forms approved by its representatives. For me, 

 I feel that I can be ambitious of no higher a title than to be knows as 

 one who administered its Government in thorough sympathy with 

 the hopes and aspirations of its first founders, and in perfect conso- 

 nance with the will of its free Parliament. I ask for no better lot 

 than to be remembered by its people as rejoicing in the gladness 

 born of their independence and of their loyalty. I desire no other 

 reputation than that which may belong to him who sees his own 

 dearest wishes in process of fulfilment in their certain progresses, in 

 their undisturbed peace, and in their ripening grandeur. " 



This able speech of the Marquis is not more truthful in its 

 graphic descriptions of the Canadian North-West, than correct in 

 the hopeful character of its prophecies concerning the future of the 



