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its invaluable fisheries and its undisturbed mineral wealth. 

 I find its inhabitants vigorous, hardy, energetic, perfected by 

 religious and British constitutional liberty. I find them jea- 

 lous of the United States and uf Great Britain, as they ought 

 to be ; and therefore, when I look at their extent and resour- 

 ces, I know they can neithei- be conquered by the former nor 

 permanently held by the latter. They will be independent as 

 they are already self-maintaining. They will be a Russia to 

 the United States, which to them will be France and Eng- 

 land." 



Statesmen are but human ; and the great Secretary was 

 mistaken again. Year by year, it is true, we know more 

 and more of our almost inexhaustible riches of river and lake, 

 forest and mine, and now that our neighbor's agricultural 

 land (without irrigation) has been exhausted, we more and 

 more appreciate the fact that Canada, not the United States, 

 possesses the great cereal belt of the continent. We extol 

 his prescience as a political economist in the matter of the 

 development of our great resources, but when we look about 

 for those who wish severance from Great Britian and find 

 them only in the columns <>f foreign newspapers, we question 

 his political prophecy, and lemembering the giant strides our 

 Confederation has made in material progress, and the welfare 

 and happiness of our people, we thank God that we are Cana- 

 dians and citizens of an Empire ten times greater than that 

 which the mental vision of Seward saw from the steps of the 

 Minnesota capitol in 1860. His national emblem is the Eagle 

 and its swift flight typifies their marvellous advancement ; 

 ours, the Beaver, that wise, cautious builder, typifying our 

 slower, safer progress ; and who shall say that ours is not the 

 better speed which stays to solve problems, such as the Indian 

 one, the neglect of which has borne such bitter fruits to our 

 more speedy southern neighbors ? And yet, have Canadians 

 any reason to be considered laggaixls when they have, in a 

 little over a quarter of a century of national life, linked Pro- 

 vince to Province, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with bands 

 of steel, made the head of Lake Superior a seaport, solved the 



