CANADA.
WHEN we come to regard our question from the colonial point of
view the first place in any consideration must obviously be
given to Canada. The national problem is there presented to us
in a crucial form. The growth and consolidation of the Dominion
have done more than anything else to make manifest the anomalous
condition of the Empire. In it we have a colony with a
population twice as large as the United States had when they
became independent, larger than that of England in Elizabeth's
time, or than that of some considerable European States at the
present day. It is a population which has proved itself equal to
the highest duties of citizenship. The slowness of earlier
growth has not been without advantage, since it has
unquestionably given steadiness and maturity to political
thought. With comparative suddenness Canada has now caught the
inspiration of a large national life. Vast undertakings in the
direction of material progress are entered upon with confidence
and executed with success. On political lines her people have
been the first to prove by actual experiment {116} on a large
scale the adaptability of a federal system to British methods of
representative and responsible government. Since confederation
was entered into nearly twenty-five years ago self-reliance has
become the keynote of Canadian life and has produced its
legitimate and ordinary results. In material development, in
political organization, in the spirit of the people, the
Dominion has reached the stage looked forward to by early
thinkers on colonial problems as the one at which it might
reasonably be expected to assume an independent national
existence. It must therefore soon bring to the test the theories
of these thinkers as to the results of national expansion.
The position of Canada is made unique among British colonies by
another condition. She is so placed geographically that
annexation to another kindred state is a manifestly possible
alternative to either independence or continued British
connection. Whether independence, annexation to the United
States, or a closer and permanent union with the Empire is most
consistent with the honour and interest of the Canadian people,
and whether the separation of Canada from the Empire is a matter
of indifference to the British nation at large, are questions to
be here discussed.
Facts of geography, facts of history, and questions of trade
relations, must enter chiefly into the consideration.
There is an advantage in giving the first place to geography.
{117}
A glance at the map shows the relation of Canada to the Oceanic
Empire of which it now forms a part. It fronts towards Europe on
the Atlantic and towards Asia on the Pacific. On both oceans it
gives the finest naval positions that a great maritime power
could desire, and the only positions possible for British people
on the American continent. A wonderful system of waterways
penetrates, from the Atlantic frontage, unto the very heart of
the continent, to prairies which are the greatest undeveloped
wheat area in the world, lands capable of supporting a large
population and of proved capacity to yield a vast surplus of
food products. The trend of the Great Lakes and of the St.
Lawrence towards the point which gives the shortest sea
connection with Europe indicates the natural direction in which
this food surplus will chiefly flow. Should the still open
question of the summer navigation of Hudson's Bay by grain
vessels be settled in the affirmative, even the facilities
offered by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence for cheap
transit would be eclipsed, and western wheat placed on English
markets at a rate hitherto unknown. But this is a contingency,
and it is perhaps better to confine the attention to settled
facts.
The significance of Canada's geographical position, facing and
commanding the two great northern oceans at the points nearest
to the opposite continents of Europe and Asia, is supplemented
by geological facts of extreme national interest. At the very
point where the Dominion stretches out furthest towards Europe,
{118} and where the maritime provinces furnish open harbours all
the year round, we find in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton
inexhaustible supplies of excellent coal. The coal areas of this
region are the only sources: of supply in Eastern America
northward of Pennsylvania, and the only sources directly upon
the eastern coast of the continent, where they seem to give a
singular advantage for both transatlantic and transcontinental
trade. Crossing now the 3800 miles which measure the breadth of
the continent, we come to the Pacific coast, and the excellent
harbours with which it also is everywhere indented. The
importance to the Empire of these harbours is manifest, since
they are the only ports under the British flag on the whole
Pacific coast of America from Cape Horn to the Behring Sea, the
only base of naval supply, the only means the Empire has of
matching the Russian depot, Vladivostock (soon to be in direct
connection with St. Petersburg itself), over which they have the
great advantage of being open all the year round. They furnish
the base from which the trade of the North Pacific is, and must
be, protected. For the defence and prosecution of trade, still
more important than the harbours themselves is the fact that in
the Island of Vancouver, where Canada stretches out so as to
give the shortest route to Japan and China, we have again an
abundance of coal. The importance of these deposits is enhanced
by the circumstance that all other coal found on the Pacific
coast from Cape Horn northward to Puget Sound is of an inferior
quality, {119} and limited in quantity. San Francisco itself
obtains a large part of its coal from Vancouver Island in the
north, or from the British colony of New South Wales on the
other side of the Pacific.
Looking East and West, then, the Dominion has its maritime
position confirmed by its supplies of coal. This is not all.
Deposits extending over thousands of square miles have been
discovered midway in the great prairie region, at once solving
the fuel problem for a treeless country and supplying the force
that carries trade and population across the continent. Later
discoveries in the Rocky Mountains indicate the presence there
of an anthracite coal peculiarly adapted to naval use, and
likely to supply our ships in the Pacific with fuel of a quality
equal to any that British mines can furnish.
The facts of Canada's maritime position thus broadly stated
will, I think, leave on most minds the impression that should
the country pass under a foreign flag, so that British ships
could claim only the rights of aliens in the harbours of the
Atlantic and Pacific, or even under an independent flag, when
they could enjoy only the rights of neutrals, the change would
mean a complete revolution in the conditions under which British
commerce is protected, and the influence of the nation
maintained on the two oceans.
There is, again, a military as well as a naval aspect from which
to regard Canada's geographical relation to the Empire.
{120}
The energy of the Canadian people has within a few years linked
together the Pacific and Atlantic frontages of the Dominion by a
great railway system. The new line has the advantage of being
shorter than any other transcontinental route, and crosses the
Rocky Mountains at a level 1500 feet below any line further
south. The anticipated obstacle of snow blockade in the mountain
district has been effectually overcome; in the Eastern or
Intercolonial section, where alone this difficulty recurs from
drifting snow, it is being reduced to a minimum. Practically it
now amounts to the possibility of one or two days' delay twice
or thrice during the winter months, and apparently even this
might be obviated by the more liberal use of snow-sheds. A
winter often passes without any obstruction worth mentioning.
The line is unquestionably the most effective among those which
cross the American continent. It has enabled English letters to
reach Japan in twenty-one days instead of the forty required by
the old routes. Military authorities pronounce it a valuable
addition to the Empire's means of communication with the East.
Its climatic advantage over the Cape of Good Hope and Suez Canal
routes at some seasons of the year may yet add strength to its
other recommendations. Compared with these routes it is also the
safest, since furthest removed from the possibility of European
attack. Of its military efficiency there can be no reasonable
doubt. The manager of the Canada Pacific Railway told me that
his company had made representations {121} to the Imperial
Government that it would undertake to transport men in blocks of
5000 from troop-ships at Halifax to troop-ships at Vancouver
within seven days. His statement is justified by the fact that a
single train has already carried 600 marines and blue-jackets
with their officers from the Pacific to the Atlantic within that
time. Such trains can be indefinitely multiplied. Thus a
squadron at Vancouver could be reinforced from Portsmouth in
about a fortnight by this route, a squadron in the China Seas in
a little more than three weeks. A fifty days' voyage in the
first case by Cape Horn, a forty days' voyage in the latter by
the Suez Canal, has hitherto been the rule. Such facts
illustrate the greatness of the changes which are taking place
in the conditions of our naval defence. The swift steamships
which complete the Eastern connection are constructed for
immediate transformation in case of necessity into armed
cruisers for the transport of troops and for the protection of
the commerce which they are themselves creating. Supplemented by
ships of a corresponding character on the Atlantic, such a route
might in a national emergency prove an immense addition to the
military resources of the Empire, and especially for the defence
of India. The mere fact of its existence adds to the nation's
military prestige, and the consequent hesitation of any other
power in making attack.
A word should be added about Canada's geographical relation to
the telegraphic system of the {122} Empire. The existing lines
of communication between the United Kingdom and the Australasian
colonies and India have never yet been tested by the chances of
a European war. In all cases they pass over foreign countries or
through shallow seas whence they could be easily fished up and
cut. What an entire break of this connection would mean in the
commercial world may be judged from the fact that even now more
than a thousand pounds a day are spent on cablegrams between
Britain and the Australasian colonies alone.
What it would mean in the emergencies of war may be left to the
imagination. The panic caused in Australia a few years since by
an accidental break in the line at a time when war with Russia
seemed imminent clearly proved the importance of the question.
These considerations sufficiently indicate the immense advantage
and greater security which would come from an alternative route
across Canada. The case was clearly stated by Mr. Sandford
Fleming, the distinguished Canadian engineer, in an address to
the Colonial Conference of 1887, to which he was a delegate:
'The western terminus of the Canadian Pacific
Railway--Vancouver--is in telegraphic communication with London.
Communications have passed between London and Vancouver, and
replies returned within a few minutes. From Vancouver cables may
be laid to Australasia by way of Hawaii or they may be laid from
one British island to {123} another, and thus bring New Zealand
and all the Australasian colonies directly into telegraphic
connection with Great Britain, without passing over any soil
which is not British, and by passing only through seas as remote
as possible from any difficulties which may arise in Europe.
'Again, India can be reached from Australasia by the lines of
the Eastern Telegraphic Company; South Africa can be reached
through the medium of the Eastern and South African Company: and
thus, by supplying the one link wanting, the Home Government
will have the means provided to telegraph to every important
British colony and dependency around the circumference of the
globe, without approaching Europe at any point.'
The advantages, commercial and military, of a line of
communication thus isolated and national, as compared with those
which pass through or near the political storm-centres of
Europe, are too obvious to require elaboration. Since 1887 a
survey of this route has been going on, though far too slowly,
under the direction of the Admiralty; groups of islands useful
for operating the line have been annexed, and the laying of the
cable seems only to depend on a more general recognition of its
national necessity.
What has now been said indicates roughly Canada's geographical
relation to the question of a united oceanic empire, of which
she may fairly be regarded as the key-stone. What is next to be
considered is {124} her relation to the great state which lies
along her southern border, and which divides with her about
equally the bulk of the North American continent. Here our study
of the map must go hand in hand with the study of Canadian
history.
A series of great lakes and rivers, and, for the rest,
astronomical or arbitrary boundary lines, constitute the only
geographical divisions between the United States and Canada. The
political and moral line of separation is due to the fact that
more than a century ago the colonies which formed the germ of
the United States revolted and threw off their connection with
Great Britain; those which formed the nucleus of Canada elected
to remain united with the mother-land and to work out their
political destiny in accordance with British institutions.
The geographical boundary, like those which divide many other
nations, seems indefinite and artificial to the mere student of
maps; it has been engraved deeply enough in the hearts of
Canadian people. It had to be defended in 1775, and once more in
the war of 1812, at much expense of life and treasure. Crossing
it in 1783 and succeeding years, the persecuted Loyalists of the
American Revolution found safety and freedom under the British
flag[1]. Again it {125} had to be defended from the Fenians
organized in 1866 on American soil. Fishing disputes and
boundary disputes, embittered by Canadian dissatisfaction with
the methods of American diplomacy, have kept attention fixed
upon the line of national demarcation. Still more sharply has it
been defined by national habits of thought. South of the line,
for at least three-quarters of a century after the Revolution,
on a thousand fourth of July platforms dislike and hatred of all
things British have been studiously inculcated. Even now an
appeal to anti-British feeling may decide the fate of a
Presidential election, and has been the winning trick of party
politics. North of the line, at every public gathering and on
every public holiday up to the present moment, loyalty to the
British nationality for which such sacrifices were made, and
allegiance to institutions which have borne thoroughly the test
of application in a new country, are recognized as of the very
essence of the popular life. The mere suspicion that these
principles were being trifled with by a few erratic and
irresponsible members of a great and otherwise perfectly loyal
political party has excluded that party from power for a period
almost beyond the limit of political experience in British
countries. It is scarcely possible to imagine conditions under
which communities kindred in race, language, and {126}
literature could have had a more decisive and divergent bias
given to their history, to national traditions and enthusiasms,
to everything that lies at the roots of individual political
life. They have prevailed decisively against contiguity, against
commercial intercourse, social intercourse, literary
intercourse, against a considerable interchange of population.
Those who know best the passions which control the popular mind
in Canada are fixed in the belief that the retention of a
political individuality independent of the United States has
become the touchstone of Canadian national honour.
To understand why this is so we must recall and account for one
primary fact, remarkable enough in itself and probably unique in
history. We can easily understand that it requires no very
marked natural boundary to form the line of division between
nations which differ in language, religion, and descent, as in
the case of European states. But in America we see that an
almost purely artificial line of division has for more than a
century been drawn across the breadth of a continent, and
between two peoples who speak the same language, study the same
literature, and are without any decisive distinctions of
religious creed. There has been a great drawing together between
the United States and Canada, as between England and Canada,
during the last twenty-five years, but it is no greater in the
one case than the other, and proceeds on social and literary,
not on political lines. Evidently there {127} is in addition to
the geographical line some fundamental principle or fact which
separates the two countries.
The same profound national convulsion which gave birth to the
United States gave birth to the real life of Canada as well. As
much principle and as much self-sacrifice were involved in the
act of the Loyalists who gave to British Canada its peculiar
character as in the struggles of the Revolutionists who founded
the American Union. For what he believed a great principle, the
Revolutionist broke down an old loyalty, cut his ties with the
past, and engaged in the battle for independence. The Loyalist,
on the other hand, with an abiding faith in the institutions of
his mother-land, not to be shaken by the single mistake of a
king, a minister, or a parliament, elected to stand by the
losing side, to depend upon constitutional agitation to secure
the full political liberty he too desired, and so sacrificed his
all to retain his connection with the past, and came to Canada.
No victory that Britain ever won by land or sea is more worthy
to be blazoned on the pages' of her history than the loyal
devotion of that great body of men and women, who, refusing to
abjure their ancient allegiance, after the Revolutionary war,
gave up their homes, their professions, and all that made life
comfortable, crossed over into what was then a forest
wilderness, and built up those Canadian provinces which have
since grown into a great British confederation.
{128}
Who will venture to say that the faith of the Loyalist has not
been as fully justified as that of the Revolutionist? American
institutions have not developed any higher forms of political or
religious freedom than those which are found in Canada and in
other colonies of the Empire today under British institutions.
They have not produced a higher tone of public morals or a
greater purity of social life. They have not even diminished the
risk of great national convulsion. They have not made impossible
the oppression or abuse of inferior races, black, red, or
yellow. They have not rendered statesmanship more noble and
unselfish, justice more incorruptible, human life more sacred,
domestic ties more holy, the people more God-fearing. I do not
believe that there is a Canadian from one end of the Dominion to
the other who honestly believes that American institutions have
equalled, much less surpassed, his own in anyone of these
particulars. If these are the things which ennoble a nation--if
these are marks of true success--the descendants of the
Loyalists have no reason to regret the choice which their
ancestors made at the time of the Revolutionary war.
The strain under which that choice was made, and the courageous
loyalty which inspired it, have never had the recognition
throughout the Empire which they deserved. One English
historian, however, has done justice to the United Empire
Loyalists. Mr. Lecky says: 'There were brave and honest men
{129} in America; who were proud of the great and free Empire to
which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden
of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude all the English
blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who,
with nothing to hope for from the Crown, were prepared to face
the most brutal mob violence, and the invectives of a scurrilous
press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes
even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate
separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile,
and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a
scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the
best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were
contending for an ideal which was, at least, as worthy as that
for which Washington had fought.'
That ideal was the conception of a United Empire.
How profoundly this great Loyalist tradition, reinforced as it
has been by many other considerations and circumstances, has
affected Canadian life, can be gauged only by the actual state
of Canadian feeling. Mr. Goldwin Smith has spared no endeavour
to prove that the assimilation of Canadian and American
sentiment is well-nigh complete. Let us, instead of consulting
his imaginative statements, study the actual and quite recent
expressions of representative public men and bodies.
Commencing in Eastern Canada, we find Attorney-General Longley,
of Nova Scotia, a pronounced {130} opponent of the present
Dominion Government, who in past times has seemed to approach
very nearly to the advocacy of annexation, now writing in the
_Fortnightly_ for March, 1891: 'There is still a deep-seated
objection in the minds of a large majority of the people of
Canada to union with the United States. It may be
unphilosophical, it may be irrational, but it exists. ... It is
not very easy to blot out a century of history in a day, and the
record of the past hundred years has had a constant tendency to
confirm British Americans in their devotion to British as
against American interests. ... It is simply not a practical
solution of the future of Canada to suggest political union with
the United States, because the preponderating majority of the
people will not hear of it. Time is the great miracle worker and
may change all this; but we must speak of things as they are. No
material considerations will induce the Canadian people at
present to accept political union with the United States.'
Archbishop O'Brien, also a Nova Scotian, and the most
representative and influential Roman Catholic of Eastern Canada,
has in many public utterances expressed his conviction that
annexation to the United States would involve for Canada moral
damage and political degradation.
New Brunswick, out of its sixteen Parliamentary representatives,
had in the last Parliament one whose attitude was ambiguous,
since as an editor he seemed to advocate, as a politician he
abjured, the idea of {131} annexation. Journalistic ability of a
high order and the fact that he represented a commercial
constituency having closer trade connection with the New England
ports than any other Canadian town made tenable for a time this
anomalous position. A decisive vote in the last election left
him out of public life, and thus deprived Mr. Goldwin Smith of
perhaps the only illustration of his claim that the advocacy of
annexation does not exclude from the Dominion Parliament.
Passing on to Quebec we find Mr. Mercier, till lately the local
French Canadian leader, hastening to supplement, as he not long
since did in Paris to a _Times_ correspondent, an expression of
opposition to Imperial Federation by the statement that there is
'no party in Canada ... in favour of annexation to the United
States.' In Ontario we find Mr. Blake, the strongest man of the
Liberal party, withdrawing from public life because he thought
he discovered, in the policy of his political friends, a
tendency towards annexation. This, at least, is the
interpretation which suggests itself to the ordinary reader of
his published explanation. The repudiation of any desire for
annexation was general, vehement, and doubtless sincere, on the
part of the more conspicuous Liberal leaders against whom it had
been charged.
Mr. Mowat, the Liberal Premier of Ontario, has lately written a
letter for publication, in which he says: 'There are in most
counties a few annexationists, {132} in some counties more than
in others; but the aggregate in the Dominion, I am sure, is
small when compared with the aggregate population. The great
majority of our people, I believe and trust, are not prepared to
hand over this great Dominion to a foreign nation for any
present commercial consideration which may be proposed. We love
our Sovereign and are proud of our status as British subjects.
The Imperial authorities have refused nothing in the way of
self-government which our representatives have asked for. ... To
the United States and its people we are all most friendly. We
recognize the advantages which would go to both them and us from
extended trade relations, and we are willing to go as far in
that direction as shall not involve, now or in the future,
political union; but there Canadians of every party have
hitherto drawn the line. ... North America is amply large enough
for two independent nations, and two friendly nations would be
better for both populations than one nation embracing the whole
continent.' In another formal statement of the policy of the
Liberal party in Canada, Mr. Mowat has said: 'We are as much
attached to our nation as the people of the United States are to
theirs. The attachment to their nation does our neighbours
honour, and intelligent men amongst them cannot regard otherwise
our attachment to our nation. As no commercial, or other
material advantage, real or supposed, would induce the people of
the United States to change their allegiance, so neither, I
hope, {133} will the prospect of some material advantage induce
Canadians to change their allegiance to the Empire. ... For the
Liberal party or any important section of it to favour political
union with the United States would be death to all hope of
Liberal ascendancy in the Councils of the Dominion.'
Going still further West to the prairie regions and British
Columbia, hitherto relied upon by Mr. Goldwin Smith for
producing a population free from the political traditions and
prejudices of the East, we find a compact vote recorded for a
Government which makes the maintenance of British connection the
corner-stone of its policy, and a chief ground of appeal to the
constituencies.
Lastly, we come back to the Dominion Parliament itself. There,
in 1890, Liberal and Conservative, Frenchman and Englishman
alike, by an absolutely unanimous vote, given with the avowed
object of silencing discussion upon the point, united in
declaring their unwavering faith in the advantage for Canada of
its existing national connection. Mr. Smith claims that
geography is too strong for national sentiment, but these are
the hard facts which he has to confront in Canada at the end of
more than a century of her separate existence. Evidence could
scarcely be more conclusive that the main facts are those to
which he resolutely shuts his eyes.
The expressions which I have given are those of moderate and
distinctly representative men, but there is a deeper passion
which must be taken into account.
{134}
Could annexation under any circumstances be effected peacefully
and at the ballot-box? I doubt it. If a day should ever come
when a bare majority of Canadians voted for annexation, would
such a decision be accepted by the minority? To many it would
mean Revolution and would be treated as such. It must be
remembered that nationality is based on feelings which often lie
too deep for mere argument or discussion. In all ages of the
world it has been a fighting issue, a question on which
minorities yielded only on compulsion. Against mere numbers,
moreover, intensity of passion and depth of conviction weigh
heavily. I have never heard the question openly discussed, and
express an opinion upon it with some diffidence, but to me it
seems certain that only coercion would make a very large and
influential section of Canadian population submit to the changes
which annexation would involve. And I think such a minority
would be justified in the eyes of all who place honour and
devotion to lofty national tradition before material gain.
Living close to the United States, Canadians can see many
practical reasons, outside of sentimental ones, why they should
not commit the fortunes of their country to an alliance with
those of the great republic. Assuming commercial advantage, the
political objections might well seem decisive as a
counterbalance. The price which the States have to pay for their
wonderful career of prosperity is not yet clear. The amazing
flood of immigration with which {135} it has been attended is
steadily diluting the Anglo-Saxon element and diminishing the
relative influence of the native American. A well-known Mayor of
Chicago not long since outlined for me the elements of the
population over which his municipal rule extended. The analysis
would form a curious study for those who would forecast the
American type of the next century: A recent event has revealed
the fact that America's population includes a great mass of
Italians, little in sympathy with the institutions under which
they live, and reinforced by emigrants who crowd every steamer
that leaves the Mediterranean to cross the Atlantic.
I lately heard a representative American writer and thinker in
England say that in his judgment the Irish question was becoming
a more disturbing factor in American politics and a more
difficult one to deal with, than it has been for Great Britain.
Of the value of this sincerely held opinion an outsider cannot
perhaps form a just estimate, but we know that a split in
Tammany may practically decide a Presidential election, and a
Canadian may fairly think that any problem of race or creed with
which he has to deal is not more perplexing.
There still remains the race issue in the South. The war of
Secession settled the slavery question: it left the negro
question as a dead weight upon the future. Thoughtful Americans
themselves are among the first to confess that they have not yet
seriously attempted to grapple with it. In the first outburst
{136} of generosity, or as a move in the game of party politics,
the franchise was given along with liberty, and the result no
one as yet foresees. Clearly the country has to face the
prospect of a steadily consolidating zone of black population
stretching far across the continent. Should the Dominion be
annexed to the United States all the voting weight of Canada
within the union would for a generation to come scarcely balance
this single negro element of America's population, supposing
that, in accordance with Canadian ideas of political justice,
the negroes should be allowed (as they are not now) to exercise
their legal right.
The violence and insecurity of life which have marked the
settlement of the West, and still prevail over whole States in
the South, are unknown in Canada. People ask why lynch law, as
little known in new British countries like Canada, New Zealand,
Australia, and South Africa, as it is in Britain itself, is
still a common phenomenon in the administration of American
justice. Canada has managed a large Indian population with
little serious difficulty; her neighbours during the same years
have been engaged in a series of wars of extermination,
apparently the outcome for the most part of maladministration in
Indian affairs. The confusion of marriage and divorce laws
throughout the various states has become a serious evil, for
which no remedy has yet been devised. If Canadians have
sometimes to wrestle with political corruption, they at least do
so resolutely and {137} effectively, while there is a widespread
belief that among their neighbours it is a permanent and
accepted factor in party government.
These points are not dwelt upon in a spirit of petty criticism,
but it seems fair to mention them as facts which influence
powerfully Canadian judgment in forming an opinion on the
comparative merits of the political systems which they see
working side by side.
One other consideration beyond that of commercial advantage has
often been thrust upon Canadians as a reason why they should
seek annexation. They are told that so long as they remain
politically connected with Britain they will be exposed to the
chances of war with the United States, since the Dominion would
naturally be made the first point of attack should differences
arise between the two countries. It is urged that resistance to
such an attack would be useless and absurd, and that Canada's
only guarantee of safety from future subjugation and the
military occupation of the country is to form as quickly as she
can and on the best terms she can, a civil union with the power
that thus threatens her.
If the appeal to mere commercial advantage seemed mercenary,
this appeal to cowardice seems base. Certainly it is one which
has never made any impression on the Canadian mind. Perhaps this
is mere recklessness. It might be argued, however, that 4000
miles of frontier are as perplexing for attack as for defence.
Canadians remember that in 1812 they successfully faced a
corresponding danger when the odds were as {138} much against
them, and numbers as disproportionate, as they are today. They
remember that to crush the Southern States, fighting without
outside help, required the most expensive and destructive war of
modern times, prolonged over renewed campaigns. They know at any
rate that the task of subduing them is one which would not be
lightly undertaken. But picture the worst that such a war could
bring: defeat, military occupation, complete subjugation. If war
between Britain and the United States be, as is claimed, a
possibility of the future, would not each and all of these be
for Canadians infinitely preferable to placing themselves in
such a position that; having abandoned a country which they
loved and joined themselves to a country which they feared, they
would by that act be pledged to use their arms, their means,
their collective forces as a people, against the land that gave
them birth, that had extended over them the strong shield of her
protection through a hundred years of struggling infancy, and
had freely given them the best she had to give of perfect
freedom and noble institutions?
I am satisfied that this argument alone is quite sufficient to
make annexation to the United States a moral impossibility for
the Canadian people. They may join heartily in every process by
which their mother-land and the great republic are drawn more
closely together; they may even be in no small degree the link
which binds them together in friendly feeling. But to expose
themselves to the possibility of hostile {139} conflict with
that mother-land for the sake of a temporary commercial
advantage or from motives of cowardice would make them incur the
contempt of the people they leave and the contempt of the people
they join. In the long run it may be taken for granted that the
path of commercial and every other prosperity will be found
along the path of national honour. That national honour is
looked upon as the issue at stake there can be no reasonable
doubt.
In considering more closely the question of commercial advantage
it may in the outset be remarked that no truly noble individual
life, much less any truly noble national life, was ever yet
built up on principles and purposes entirely mercenary. The
landmarks in history to which the human heart everywhere turns
with a thrill of instinctive pride are the periods when nations
have forgotten, for a time, self-interest and the love of gain,
and in the glow of patriotic enthusiasm have made great
sacrifices from motives of principle, affection, honour, and
loyalty, British Canada owes its foundation to such an outburst
of lofty spirit. The United States themselves were founded, as a
nation, upon what seemed at the time an utter defiance of
commercial advantage, and the heroic periods of that country, as
of every other, the periods which gave birth to all that is
noblest and purest in it, were not the times of its wealth and
luxury, but the times of its self-denial, suffering, effort, and
sacrifice. Prosperity must be an incident of noble national
life; not the sole foundation on which it is built.
{140}
Again, while it would be absurd to undervalue material
prosperity, we must constantly remember that its highest value
consists as much in the discipline of the powers required for
its acquisition as in the acquisition or possession itself. This
must be as true of nations as daily experience shows it to be in
the case of individuals. When Canadians are told that they must
look to political union with the United States for any increase
of commercial prosperity, and that such a connection will at
once draw them into a tide of greater business energy, I cannot
but think that a prosperity purchased by such means is obtained
by the sacrifice of that which gives prosperity its greatest
worth. Speaking as a Canadian to Canadian audiences, I have
sometimes put the argument in this way: 'We have a country with
enormous capacity for development. The field is large enough and
varied enough to satisfy the greatest energy and every form of
it. The consolidation of a national strength, the linking
together of our widespread provinces by railway systems, the
opening up of our great North-West, seem to have removed the
chief obstacles which have hitherto stood in our way. Under such
circumstances, or under any circumstances, would it not be
infinitely more worthy of us, would it not be a far better
national training and discipline, to set ourselves resolutely to
work to supply that in which we are deficient, rather than to
seek it ignominiously at the hands of our neighbours? Can it be
true that we have not the strength of brain or hand to wrest
from nature the {141} success and prosperity which others have
won? If we have not, then let us not add to our weakness a
spirit of mean dependence.'
Looking at the question under aspects such as these, I find it
impossible to conceive that Canadians, who have for more than a
century received their national impulse and development from a
political system which they believe the best in the world, for
which they have continued to profess the most devoted regard,
and to which they are tied by a thousand bonds of affectionate
sympathy, will deliberately, in cold blood, and for commercial
reasons only, dissolve that connection, and join themselves to a
state with the history and traditions of which they have little
sympathy, and to whose form of government they object. To take
such a course would indicate an extraordinary degradation of
public sentiment.
When, therefore, I am told that geography and commercial
tendencies are strong, I can only reply that the bias of
national life and loyalty to the spiritual forces which give a
people birth are stronger still. A sensitive regard for public
honour is infinitely stronger.
But even the question of commercial advantage has two aspects.
Comparing the relative advantages of the United States and the
British Empire we find that with the former lies that of
continental isolation--a position so secure, peopled as the
country now is, that no external power could hope to shake it.
Attack might be annoying and detrimental, but by no means fatal,
{142} for the chief dependence of the country is not upon
external trade. Even a blockade of all its ports would stimulate
internal activity, for the United States are almost
self-sufficing in the matter of production, and manufacturing
industry would have the whole union entirely to itself. A very
remarkable and advantageous position we must admit this to be,
freeing the country from external dangers to which other nations
are subject, and so leaving it in a better position to grapple
with those vast internal problems of race and colour which
confront it.
Very different indeed is the advantage which Britain enjoys. She
has, however, no reason to envy the great Republic. Instead of
continental compactness she has world-wide diffusion--precisely
that kind of diffusion which satisfies the necessities of
countries which depend, and must always to a considerable degree
depend, upon external trade. It would be too much perhaps to say
that at the present moment the British Empire possesses the same
security on the ocean that the United States have on their
continent, but it is not too much to affirm that with her
command of the strongest maritime positions of the world, her
backing of vigorous and growing populations, and her resources
in money and trained men for naval equipment, she could soon
become so. This is the kind of security which Britain requires
with her vast outflow of merchandise--her inflow of food and raw
material. It is the kind of security needed by countries like
Australia, New Zealand, or South {143} Africa, which have an
enormous export of special products for which the character of
the country is specially adapted. If no question of national
honour were involved, and if Canada had to make a choice purely
upon grounds of national security between what is offered to her
from connection with the United States and with the Empire, the
decision would depend upon whether she aspired to great
commercial connections or would be content with merely
continental relations. It is certain that if the United States
ever regain control of their own carrying trade, or if by the
development of manufacturing energy they are led to look largely
to outside markets, they will feel more and more the limitations
imposed by a purely continental position. Canada has at the
present time large maritime interests. Her great length of sea
coast, the productive fisheries east and, west, the facility for
ship-building given by her forests, have stimulated her maritime
activity to such an extent that in tonnage of shipping she now
ranks fourth among the nations of the world, counting the United
Kingdom as one. Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of
the world, taking part in the carrying trade. Several great
steam-ship lines cross the Atlantic, another connects the
Pacific coast with Japan and China--a line is projected to
Australasia--others carry on trade with the eastern and western
coasts of America and with the West Indies. The instincts and
conditions which have made British people a maritime and trading
race are renewed in {144} the Dominion. Canada's interest is to
retain the national connection which gives her commerce the best
opportunities, her fleets the surest protection in all parts of
the world.
The Canadian shipmaster or trader knows that at ports all over
the world, at Hong Kong and Calcutta, at Malta or Melbourne, at
the Cape or Auckland, in a word, at all the great centres of the
world's ocean commerce, he can claim the protection of the
national flag, he has a right to apply to the British consul, he
can rely on the prestige of the British name. These are rights
of which the Canadian knows the value. They are rights which he
is not likely to relinquish, for they have been honestly won,
first by retaining his allegiance at the price of much sacrifice
in the revolution of 1776, and then by steady persistence in
that allegiance at all costs through more than a century. He
knows they are rights that no other nation can give him in equal
degree.
It is in trade relations, however, that Canada's interest is
supposed to look away from Great Britain or the rest of the
Empire, and towards the United States. Twenty years ago the
American Republic entered upon its policy of excluding as far as
possible the products of other countries, and among them those
of Canada, by a high protective tariff. That policy has been
steadily maintained until it has reached a climax in the
McKinley tariff. It had previously forced a protective policy
upon Canada itself. It seems clear that the Dominion has
suffered {145} to some extent commercially by this exclusion
from the markets of her own continent, by the resolute
determination of their neighbours that Canadians shall not, as
Canadians, have any share in the prosperity of the United
States. That she has gained in energy, self-reliance, and
national purpose is equally clear to anyone who attempts to
measure the splendid and successful efforts which she has since
confederation and under this exclusion made at self-development.
That the moral gain infinitely outweighs the commercial loss, I,
for one, firmly believe. But there are those who argue that for
the commercial advantage which it is anticipated would flow from
union with the United States, the continental independence of
the country, its historical traditions, its political
institutions, its nationality, should be abandoned. In Great
Britain itself there are found many who assume as a matter of
course that commercial attraction will inevitably lead to the
political absorption of the Dominion into the United States. I
believe that the opinion is a mistaken one. The grounds upon
which it is based deserve examination. Let it be remembered that
no one now ventures to bring forward in support of this
proposition any argument based on the superior freedom or
excellence of American institutions, social or political. The
day for that is past. We can assert, without fear of
contradiction, that the condition of the self-governing colonies
of Britain finds no parallel in the world in making government
an immediate reflection of the {146} popular will, and so in
giving the utmost possible freedom and weight of influence to
the individual citizen. When Lord Dufferin told an American
audience at Chicago that Canadians would not breathe freely in a
country where the Executive was placed for years together beyond
the reach of the popular will, and was not under the constant
supervision of the Legislative bodies, he indicated a vital
difference which distinguishes the form of popular government in
British countries from the American system, a difference which
colonists think is all in favour of the former. If the
government of any self-ruling dependency of England is bad, the
fault lies in the character of the constituency, not in the form
of government.
The question, then, is purely one of commercial advantage, a
certain supposed and possibly temporary per-centage of trade
gain which Canadians would secure by abjuring their national
allegiance.
Grounds are not wanting for the belief that the inevitable
tendency of several very great trade interests of Canada is more
towards Great Britain and some of the British dependencies than
towards the United States. From their position and physical
character Canada and the United States must in many ways be
rival producers. Both are great grain and cattle raising
countries. Both wish their surplus of agricultural productions
to reach the consuming millions of the old world, or the
tropical countries like the West Indies where they may be
exchanged for articles of {147} use or luxury. Certain it is
that the United States now export to Great Britain many millions
of pounds' worth of those very products which Canada sends in
smaller quantities to the States. Such a fact scarcely bears out
the assertion that the United States furnish the natural market
of Canada. It rather suggests that better organization for
transport and greater commercial enterprize would make the
English market the more valuable of the two for Canada.
But while urging this view of ultimate trade tendencies there is
no need to underestimate the present advantage and convenience
which Canada would derive from the freest possible access to
American markets. These may be at once admitted, the only
qualification being that Canada cannot afford to purchase
advantage and convenience at the price of national dishonour or
humiliation. Let us remember, however, that advantage and
convenience are not confined to one side.
It is already true, it is becoming increasingly true, that the
United States must have Canadian products. They leap over even
the barrier of a McKinley tariff. American forests are nearly
exhausted--those of Canada are not only still of immense extent,
but practically inexhaustible, since nature has reserved by
conditions of soil and climate, large areas exclusively for the
growth of trees. Canadian waters have well nigh a monopoly of
the best fish of the American continent. From Nova Scotia
northward gulf and bay swarm with fish which pour downwards
{148} from the cold Arctic regions in numbers that never fail,
and of the best quality. The lakes and rivers of the north-west
might well supply the whole of the centre of the continent with
fresh-water fish. On the Pacific the Canadian monopoly is not so
complete since the purchase of Alaska by the United States, but
the fisheries of British Columbia have a great future. On the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the inland prairie region
Canada can supply coal in abundance to regions in the United
States without deposits of their own. American brewers find it
necessary to have Canadian barley, and are earnestly petitioning
Congress to reduce the duty from thirty to the old rate of ten
cents per bushel. So too with farm produce of other kinds.
American consumers now pay a higher price for the eggs and
poultry once drawn from Canada but driven by the McKinley tariff
to seek new, and as it turns out, fairly satisfactory markets in
Great Britain. That tariff must inevitably result in a largely
increased development of manufacturing industry, a closer
pressure of consumption upon producing power in the matter of
food in the United States, and a consequent increase in the
demand, already very noticeable in New England towns, for easy
access to Canadian supplies. The freedom of the markets of the
continent is likely ere long to be a stronger election cry in
the United States than it has been in the Dominion[2].
{149}
Something ought perhaps to be said in reference to the part
which Canada seems likely to take in supplying food to the
United Kingdom. The area of wheat production has shifted rapidly
on the American continent, first westward from New York State to
Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, then northward to Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and Dakota. Till within a few years past these
northern states of the Union were supposed to mark the limit of
successful wheat cultivation. Actual experience has now proved
that it is several hundreds of miles further north, and that in
Canadian territory is included the largest and richest
undeveloped wheat area in the world. Allowance must be made for
occasional early frosts, which are, {150} however, not so
disastrous as Indian or Australian droughts, and may apparently
be successfully combated by fall ploughing and early sowing.
When this allowance is made, it seems clearly proved that in
both quantity and quality the north-western provinces and
territories of Canada will soon take a leading place in grain
supply. The railway, which opened up the country to settlement,
was completed in 1885. Yet in 1887 the districts which it
reached, with but a scattered population, yielded 12,000,000
bushels of surplus wheat; in 1890, 16,000,000 bushels; and the
estimate for 1891 is 21,000,000 bushels. Eight times this
quantity would supply the whole British demand. At the present
average of production 100,000 farmers thrown into the
north-west, which {151} is capable of absorbing many hundreds of
thousands, would raise all the wheat that now comes into the
United Kingdom. Statisticians are already forecasting the date
when the growth of population, going on side by side with the
exhaustion of the more fertile prairie lands in the United
States, will equalize production and consumption in that
country, and leave it unable to furnish the supplies on which
Britain has hitherto so largely depended. Speaking to a
Yorkshire audience not long since, Sir Lyon Playfair suggested
twenty years hence as the probable period to the time when
England could expect to draw wheat supplies from the United
States, after which she would have to depend on Canada, India,
and other countries chiefly within the Empire. On the same
question Mr. Bryce, in speaking of the United States, says:
'High economic authorities pronounce that the beginnings of this
time of pressure lie not more than thirty years ahead. Nearly
all the best arable land of the West is already occupied, so
that the second and third best will soon begin to be cultivated;
while the exhaustion already complained of in farms which have
been under the plough for three or four decades will be
increasingly felt.' Like opinions have been expressed by
American writers. Whatever may be thought about the precise
point of time, the tendency is manifest. Within a measurable
time the Empire will, by the natural progress of events, mainly
supply its own markets with wheat, and, it may be added, with
its second most important article of consumption {152} meat. The
argument which I have used in another place, pointing to the
advantage and greater security for both producer and consumer,
of having so far as possible the areas which furnish the raw
material of manufacture under the protection of the national
flag, applies with equal, if not greater force, to food supply.
[1] 'Mob violence and many forms of injustice, made life almost
intolerable for them in their homes, and emigration to British
territory took place on a scale which has been hardly paralleled
since the Huguenots. It has been estimated, apparently on good
authority, that in the two provinces of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick alone, the Loyalist emigrants and their families
amounted to not less than 35,000 persons, and the total number
of refugees cannot have been much less than 100,000.--Jones'
'History of New York,' ii. 259, 268, 500, 509. An American
authority quoted by Mr. Lecky.
[2] Since writing the above I have found the case thus put from
the United States point of view in the _North American Review_
for August, 1890:--'The exhaustion of the forests of Maine, the
disappearance of the forests in the Saginaw valley, and the
utter disregard for the future by which the policy of protection
has stimulated the policy of destruction, will in a quarter of a
century result in denuding vast areas of the United States of
the timber supply available within reasonable reach of its great
points of demand. All the industries dependent upon timber, if
they are to grow in the next twenty years, will need new
resources for the supply of the raw material. Whence can these
be obtained except from the portion of the continent outside of
the United States? ...When one recalls the vast stretches of
treeless prairies within the United States, in which shelter
must be provided, the necessities and exhaustion of rainless
regions resulting from the destruction of forests, and the rapid
growth of vast cities on the lakes and plains, and also the fact
that from the northern part of the continent above is a supply
of timber certain for all future time, the necessity for the
extension of commerce so as to include these areas is apparent.
...
'The exhaustion of wheat lands is a consideration of the most
vital importance in relation to the future supply of the food of
this continent. It is a startling fact, not yet fully realized
by the people of this country, that at the present rate of
procedure the United States may be a large importer of
breadstuffs. The growth of population is so rapid, the
exhaustion of arable land so constant, that without new and
cultivable territory the sources for the supply of food products
will soon be below the local demand. ... When it is recalled
that the best wheat-producing region of the world is found just
north of the Minnesota line, and that in the new provinces and
territories of the Canadian north-west there is a possible
wheat-supply for all time, it will be seen how important has
been the provision of nature for the food of mankind.'
And again:-' Cheap food for New England is the necessity of the
hour in that region. ... In the Maritime Provinces are abundant
sources of food supply. No other country in the world can
produce potatoes, apples, oats, hay, poultry, dairy produce,
and, still more important, the finest fish food, equal to Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. ... In the
unlimited supply of cheap raw material from Canada, in the
unrestricted output of fish and food products, and the constant
employment of cheap labour from the north, the new hope of New
England may be found. Without these her manufacturing prospects
are gloomy indeed.'
{153}