THE FUTURE OF CANADA.
I may venture, I hope, to put down here some of the conclusions to which
my fifty years' experience in Canada, and my observation of what has
been going on during the same term in the United States, have led me. It
is a favourite boast with our neighbours, that all North America must
ultimately be brought under one government, and that the manifest
destiny of Canada will irresistibly lead her on to annexation. And we
have had, and still have amongst us, those who welcome the idea, and
some who have lately grown audacious enough to stigmatize as traitors
those who, like myself, claim to be citizens, not of the Dominion only,
but of the Empire.
To say nothing of the semi-barbarous population of Mexico, who would
have to be consulted, there is a section of the Southern States which
may yet demand autonomy for the Negro race, and which will in all
probability seize the first opportunity for so doing. Then in Canada, we
have a million of French Canadians, who make no secret of their
preference for French over British alliance; and who will surely claim
their right to act upon their convictions the moment British authority
shall have become relaxed. Nor can they be blamed for this, however we
may doubt the soundness of their conclusions. Then we have the Acadians
of Nova Scotia, who would probably follow French Canada wheresoever she
might lead; nor could the few British people of New Brunswick and Prince
Edward Island--unaided by England--escape the same fate. Even Eastern
Ontario might have to fight hard to escape a French Republican regime.
There remain Middle and Western Ontario, and the North-West--two
naturally isolated territories, neither of which could be expected to
incur the horrors of war for the sake of the other. It is not, I think,
difficult to foresee, that, given independence, Ontario must inevitably
cast her lot in with the United States. But with the North-West, the
case is entirely different.
From Liverpool to Winnipeg, _via_ Hudson's Bay, the distance is less by
eleven hundred miles than by way of the St. Lawrence. From Liverpool to
China and Japan, _via_ the same northern route, the distance is--as a
San Francisco journal points out--a thousand miles shorter than by any
other trans-American line. It is really _two thousand miles_ shorter
than _via_ San Francisco and New York. From James's Bay as a centre, the
cities of Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton, London, and
Winnipeg, are pretty nearly equidistant. How immense, then, will be the
power which the possession of the Hudson's Bay, and of the railway route
through to the Pacific, must confer upon Great Britain, so long as she
holds it under her sole control. And where is the nation that can
prevent her so holding it, while her fleets command the North Atlantic
Ocean. Is it not utterly inconceivable, that English statesmen can be
found so mad or so unpatriotic, as to throw away the very key of the
world's commerce, by neglecting or surrendering British interests in the
North-West; or that Manchester and Birmingham--Sheffield and
Glasgow--should sustain for a moment any government that could dream of
so doing. I firmly believe, in fine, that either by the St. Lawrence or
the Hudson's Bay route, or both, British connexion with Canada is
destined to endure, all prognostications to the contrary
notwithstanding. England may afford to be shut out of the Suez canal, or
the Panama canal, or the entire of her South African colonies, better
than she can afford to part with the Dominion, and notably the Canadian
North-West. If there be any two countries in the world whose interests
are inseparable, they are the British Isles and North-Western
Canada--the former being constrained by her food necessities, the latter
by her want of a secure grain market. Old Canada, some say, has her
natural outlet in the United States--which is only very partially true,
as the reverse might be asserted with equal force. Not so the
North-West. She has her natural market in Great Britain; and Great
Britain, in turn, will find in the near future her best customer in
Manitoba and the North-Western prairies.
So mote it be!