COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE AND TRANSPORTATION. 251 



Instances might be cited of tlie expression of sim- 

 ilar ideas in Parliament. 



Loyalists in Canada must remember another thing. 

 Montesquieu, with the singular penetration which 

 distinguished him, perceives that England imjDarts to 

 her Colonies "la forme de son Government," by 

 means of which " on verroit se former de grands peu- 

 ples dans les forets memes qu'elle enverroit habiter." 

 But the parliamentary form of Government, which 

 has contributed so greatly to the growth and strength 

 of British Colonies, gave to them facilities of success- 

 ful rebellion, — that is, of separation from the Metrop- 

 olis, — which no other form of government could im- 

 part, and the absence of which in Spanish America 

 [and now in Cuba] has done so much to impede and 

 obstruct their separation from Spain. We had ex- 

 perience of this in our Revolution, where each of the 

 Colonies had a governmental organization so com- 

 plete that, in order to be independent de facto, it 

 needed only to ship off the British Governor. The 

 same fact was apparent in our Secession War, as M. 

 de Tocqueville had predicted. And, at this time, the 

 Dominion of Canada needs only to substitute for a 

 British Governor one of her own choice to become 

 a sovereign State organized as comj^letely as Great 

 Britain herself. 



There is another class of considerations of great 

 importance. 



War between the United States and Great Britain 

 is now a contingency almost inadmissible as supposi- 

 tion, and so, of course, is war between the United 



