THEIR HOPE AND PRAYER. 63 



over our difficulties. England's enmity is manifest. 

 She is throwing every obstacle in the way to prevent 

 our succeeding. Her object is to prevent us from 

 securing help abroad and so compel us to bankrupt on 

 June 30, when our next half-yearly interest becomes 

 due. Then she will revoke our charter of self-govern- 

 ment and reduce us to a Crown colony." 



THEIR HOPE AND PRAYER. 



And this in the end of the nineteenth century, 

 under the electric light, at the hands of the Govern- 

 ment of Her Majesty, Victoria the Good ! Can it be 

 wondered at that the islanders are unwilling to trust 

 the Crown, or even federation into the Dominion, but 

 look with laying hope for the great Republic to reach 

 northward and take North America from the St. 

 Lawrence to Baffin's Bay under the protection of the 

 Stars and Stripes? This feeling was manifest to us in 

 the "open sesame" effect of the name of American 

 wherever it was heard. To be sure we have our 

 financial crashes and crises, but we have not yet been 

 reduced to the commercial slavery that has nearly 

 crushed our island neighbors. 



