or idea of punishing the alleged injuries suffered by the States from Great Britain by the annexation of those provinces, I do not believe that any sane-minded citizens of the States believe in the possibility of such retaliation. Some years since the Americans thought that Canada might shine in the Union firmament as a new star, but that delusion is, I think, over. Such annexation if ever made, must have been made not only against the arms of England but must also have been made in accordance with the wishes of the people so annexed. It was then believed that the Canadians were not averse to such a change, and there may possibly have then been among them the remnant of such a wish. There is certainly no such desire now, not even a remnant of such a desire; and the truth on this matter is, I think, generally acknowledged. The feeling in Canada is one of strong aversion to the United States Government, and of predilection for self-government under the English Crown. A fainéant Governor and the prestige of British power is now the political aspiration of the Canadians in general; and I think that this is understood in the States. Moreover the States have a job of work on hand which, as they themselves are well aware, is taxing all their energies. Such being the case I do not think that England needs to fear any invasion of Canada, authorized by the States Government.

This feeling of a grievance on the part of the States was a manifest absurdity. The new reinforcement of the garrisons in Canada did not, when I was in Canada, amount as I believe to more than 2,000 men. But had it amounted to 20,000 the States would have had no just ground for complaint. Of all nationalities that in modern days have risen to power, they above all others have shown that they would do what they liked with their own, indifferent to foreign councils, and deaf to foreign remonstrance. "Do you go your way, and let us go ours. We will trouble you with no question, nor do you trouble us." Such has been their national policy, and it has obtained for them great respect. They have resisted the temptation of putting their fingers into the caldron of foreign policy; and foreign politicians, acknowledging their reserve in this respect, have not been offended at the bristles with which their Noli me tangere has been proclaimed. Their intelligence has been appreciated, and their conduct has been respected. But if this has been their line of policy, they must be entirely out of court in raising any question as to the position of British troops on British soil.

"It shows us that you doubt us," an American says, with an

air of injured honour-or did say, before that Trent affair. "And it is done to express sympathy with the South. The Southerners understand it, and we understand it also. We know where your hearts are; nay, your very souls. They are among the slave-begotten cotton bales of the rebel South." Then comes the whole of the long argument, in which it seems so easy to an Englishman to prove that England in the whole of this sad matter has been true and loyal to her friend. She could not interfere when the husband and wife would quarrel. She could only grieve, and wish that things might come right and smooth for both parties. But the argument though so easy is never effectual.

It seems to me foolish in an American to quarrel with England for sending soldiers to Canada; but I cannot say that I thought it was well done to send them at the beginning of the war. The English Government did not, I presume, take this step with reference to any possible invasion of Canada by the Government of the States. We are fortifying Portsmouth, and Portland, and Plymouth, because we would fain be safe against the French army acting under a French Emperor. But we sent 2,000 troops to Canada, if I understand the matter rightly, to guard our provinces against the filibustering energies of a mass of unemployed American soldiers, when those soldiers should come to be disbanded. When this war shall be overa war during which not much, if any, under a million of American citizens will have been under arms-it will not be easy for all who survive to return to their old homes and old occupations. Nor does a disbanded soldier always make a good husbandman, notwithstanding the great examples of Cincinnatus and Bird-o'-freedom Sawin. It may be that a considerable amount of filibustering energy will be afloat, and that the then Government of those who neighbour us in Canada will have other matters in hand more important to them than the controlling of these unruly spirits. That, as I take it, was the evil against which we of Great Britain and of Canada desired to guard ourselves.

But I doubt whether 2,000 or 10,000 British soldiers would be any effective guard against such inroads, and I doubt more strongly whether any such external guarding will be necessary. If the Canadians were prepared to fraternize with filibusters from the States, neither three nor ten thousand soldiers would avail against such a feeling over a frontier stretching from the State of Maine to the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Erie. If such a feeling did exist, if the Canadians wished the change, in

God's name let them go. Is it for their sakes and not for our own that we would have them bound to us? But the Canadians are averse to such a change with a degree of feeling that amounts to national intensity. Their sympathies are with the Southern States, not because they care for cotton, not because they are anti-abolitionists, not because they admire the hearty pluck of those who are endeavouring to work out for themselves a new revolution. They sympathize with the South from strong dislike to the aggression, the braggadocio, and the insolence they have felt upon their own borders. They dislike Mr. Seward's weak and vulgar joke with the Duke of Newcastle. They dislike Mr. Everett's flattering hints to his countrymen as to the one nation that is to occupy the whole continent. They dislike the Monroe doctrine. They wonder at the meekness with which England has endured the vauntings of the Northern States, and are endued with no such meekness of their own. They would, I believe, be well prepared to meet and give an account of any filibusters who might visit them; and I am not sure that it is wisely done on our part to show any intention of taking the work out of their hands.

But I am led to this opinion in no degree by a feeling that Great Britain ought to grudge the cost of the soldiers. If Canada will be safer with them, in heaven's name let her have them. It has been argued in many places, not only with regard to Canada, but as to all our self-governed colonies, that military service should not be given at British expense and with British men to any colony which has its own representative government, and which levies its own taxes. "While Great Britain absolutely held the reins of government, and did as it pleased with the affairs of its dependencies," such politicians say, "it was just and right that she should pay the bill. As long as her government of a colony was paternal, so long was it right that the mother country should put herself in the place of a father, and enjoy a father's undoubted prerogative of putting his hand into his breeches pocket to provide for all the wants of his child. But when the adult son set up for himself in business, having received education from the parent, and having had his apprentice fees duly paid, then that son should settle his own bills, and look no longer to the paternal pocket." Such is the law of the world all over, from little birds whose_young fly away when fledged, upwards to men and nations. Let the father work for the child while he is a child, but when the child has become a man let him lean no longer on his father's staff. The argument is, I think, yery good; but it proves, not that

we are relieved from the necessity of assisting our colonies with payments made out of British taxes, but that we are still bound to give such assistance; and that we shall continue to be so bound as long as we allow these colonies to adhere to us, or as they allow us to adhere to them. In fact the young bird is not yet fully fledged. That illustration of the father and the child is a just one, but in order to make it just it should be followed throughout. When the son is in fact established on his own bottom, then the father expects that he will live without assistance. But when the son does so live he is freed from all paternal control. The father, while he expects to be obeyed, continues to fill the paternal office of paymaster,-of paymaster, at any rate, to some extent. And so, I think, it must be with our colonies. The Canadas at present are not independent, and have not political power of their own apart from the political power of Great Britain. England has declared herself neutral as regards the Northern and Southern States, and by that neutrality the Canadas are bound; and yet the Canadas were not consulted in the matter. Should England go to war with France, Canada must close her ports against French vessels. If England chooses to send her troops to Canadian barracks, Canada cannot refuse to accept them. If England should send to Canada an unpopular Governor, Canada has no power to reject his services. As long as Canada is a colony, so called, she cannot be independent, and should not be expected to walk alone. It is exactly the same with the colonies of Australia, with New Zealand, with the Cape of Good Hope, and with Jamaica. While England enjoys the prestige of her colonies, while she boasts that such large and now populous territories are her dependencies, she must and should be content to pay some portion of the bill. Surely it is absurd on our part to quarrel with Caffre warfare, with New Zealand fighting, and the rest of it. Such complaints remind one of an ancient paterfamilias, who insists on having his children and his grandchildren under the old paternal roof, and then grumbles because the butcher's bill is high. Those who will keep large households and bountiful tables should not be afraid of facing the butcher's bill, or unhappy at the tonnage of the coal. It is a grand thing, that power of keeping a large table; but it ceases to be grand when the items heaped upon it cause inward groans and outward moodiness.

Why should the colonies remain true to us as children are true to their parents, if we grudge them the assistance which is due to a child? They raise their own taxes, it is said, and

administer them. True; and it is well that the growing son should do something for himself. While the father does all for him the son's labour belongs to the father. Then comes a middle state in which the son does much for himself, but not all. In that middle state now stand our prosperous colonies. Then comes the time when the son shall stand alone by his own strength; and to that period of manly self-respected strength let us all hope that those colonies are advancing. It is very hard for a mother country to know when such a time has come; and hard also for the child-colony to recognize justly the period of its own maturity. Whether or no such severance may ever take place without a quarrel, without weakness on one side and pride on the other, is a problem in the world's history yet to be solved. The most successful child that ever yet has gone off from a successful parent and taken its own path int the world, is without doubt the nation of the United States. Their present troubles are the result and the proofs of their success. The people that were too great to be dependent on any nation have now spread till they are themselves too great for a single nationality. No one now thinks that that daughter should have remained longer subject to her mother. But the severance was not made in amity, and the shrill notes of the old family quarrel are still sometimes heard across the waters.

From all this the question arises whether that problem may ever be solved with reference to the Canadas. That it will never be their destiny to join themselves to the States of the Union, I feel fully convinced. In the first place, it is becoming evident from the present circumstances of the Union,-if it had never been made evident by history before,—that different people with different habits living at long distances from each other cannot well be brought together on equal terms under one Government. That noble ambition of the Americans that all the continent north of the Isthmus should be united under one flag, has already been thrown from its saddle. The North and South are virtually separated, and the day will come in which the West also will secede. As population increases and trades arise peculiar to those different climates, the interests of the people will differ, and a new secession will take place beneficial alike to both parties. If this be so, if even there be any tendency this way, it affords the strongest argument against the probability of any future annexation of the Canadas. And then, in the second place, the feeling of Canada is not American, but British. If ever she be separated from Great Britain,