COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE AND TRANSPORTATION. 95S 



tario and Quebec have no access to the sea in the long 

 winter, save through the United States. 



Thus, if it be possible to conceive of two countries, 

 which would appear to be naturally destined to con- 

 stitute one Government, they are the United States 

 and the British Provinces, to the special advantage 

 of the latter rather than the former. 



We therefore can aftbrd to wait. We have nothing 

 to apprehend from the Dominion Pacific Railway : if 

 constructed, it will not relieve Ontario and Quebec 

 from their transit dependence on the United States. 

 We welcome every sign of prosperity in the Domin- 

 ion. With the natural limitations to her growth, and 

 the restricted capacity of her home or foreign mar- 

 kets, her prosperity will never be sufficient to prevent 

 her landowners and her merchants from lookine: wist- 

 fully toward the more progressive poj^ulation and the 

 more capacious markets of the United States. Her 

 conspicuous public men may be sincerely loyal to the 

 British Crown ; many of the best men of Massachu- 

 setts, New York, and Virginia were so at the opening 

 of the American Revolution ; but neither in French 

 Canada, nor in British Canada, nor in the maritime 

 Provinces, do any forces of sentiment or of interest 

 exist adequate to withstand those potent natural and 

 moi'al causes, or to arrest that fatal march of events, 

 which have rendered nearly all the rest of America 

 indejiendent of Europe, and can not fail, sooner or 

 later, to reach the same consummation in the Domin- 

 ion of Canada. 



The spirit of independence is a rising tide, in Can- 



