26 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



shall be referred to this Commission whenever the government of 

 either country shall so request. 



With regard to the rider added in the Senate respecting the 

 division of the water at Sault Ste. Marie, at the instance of the 

 Senator from Michigan, I wish carefully to avoid expressing any 

 opinion or entering into controversy as to the merits or demerits of 

 the proposition, but the mere fact itself serves to call attention 

 prominently to the unsatisfactory provision of having to submit an 

 arrangement settled and agreed upon between the two governments, 

 no doubt largely on the principle of give and take, to the approval of 

 an elective body, where there is such a tremendous temptation to 

 attempt to gain local popularity by standing out for some one-sided 

 advantage. From the recent statement made in the Canadian House 

 of Commons by the Premier, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, it appears that 

 this attempted amendment has actually imperilled and may yet pos- 

 sibly wreck the whole scheme. 



It has often been to me a cause of great surprise that the more 

 civilized nations, whose subjects or citizens have been so long accus- 

 tomed to settle their local differences through the Courts and by 

 arbitration, have been as a rule so tardy in learning to apply the 

 same principle in the settlement of their International difficulties. 

 As to these latter, many of them have continued to cling to the code 

 of ethics attributed by Wordsworth to Rob Roy : 



"For why? — because the good old rule 

 Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 

 That they should take who have the power. 

 And they should keep who can." 



And this course has not been without its Christian apologists. I re- 

 member less than twenty years ago hearing the editor of one of the 

 leading religious journals on this continent declare with great em- 

 phasis, in an international gathering, that the principles of the 

 Sermon on the Mount had no application to national or international 

 affairs. Again, let us take another illustration from a narrower 

 field. How often do we find officers of great corporations ready to 

 practise and justify methods of business and policies for the cor- 

 porate benefit that they would scorn to use in their personal affairs 

 or for individual profit — men amiable and considerate in their private 

 relations who are tyrants and pirates in their corporate capacity. 

 We all know that the Dr. Jekylls and the Mf. Hydes really exist 

 outside the imagination and the pages of Stevenson. So also with 

 many public men respecting public matters. The fact is that while 



