The New Canadian Patriotism

 

By Leigh Richmond Gregor

 

[Published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in Transactions, New Series, No. 22 (1898)]

 

LECTURE GIVEN APRIL 12th, 1898, BEFORE MORRIN COLLEGE AND

THE LITERARY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF QUEBEC, BY

LEIGH R. GREGOR, B. A., PH. D., LECTURER ON THE

GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN

MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL

 

THE good citizen loves his country in the same way that he loves his family—instinctively. His passion is irrational. The patriot, even the unaggressive patriot who bears no feelings of hostility to other countries, still gives a preference to his own which is neither due to its qualities nor lessened by its defects. Patriotism will not be in place in a perfect world, and therefore Plato made a mistake when he provided his ideal Republic with armed defenders. There will be no defenders and therefore no Patriots in the Ideal Republic, for no state can be regarded as ideal which does not include the whole of mankind. The universal republic, the federation of the world, excludes the possibility of war. "When the ideal state is constituted, the army and navy will have ceased to exist and patriotism will have given way to cosmopolitanism. I do not think Patriotism will disappear unregretted, for a more powerful sentiment does not exist, a sentiment more generally intelligible, one more capable of transforming the common man, or one which in spite of its irrationality appeals more strongly to the higher type of mind. Patriotism has an immense roll of honour. The names of Epaminondas, William "Wallace, Joan of Arc, stand out a little more boldly than others, but thousands of men and women unknown to history, unknown even to their neighbouring villages, have deserved equally well of their country. In such patriots, most frequently inconspicuous, but sometimes shining on the page of fame, our country is not poor. Canadians are justly jealous of their independence. On more than one occasion they have defended themselves against great odds.

 

Now, if such patriotism as we have always had were sufficient for our purpose, if our conception of Canada as an aggregate of self-sufficing, independent, bread-earning units, capable of joint action in times of need, needed no enlargement, then I should be obliged to change the title of my address or the character of it, for a New Canadian Patriotism would be unwelcome, or more probably be non-existent. But I think you all agree with me that there is a New Canadian Patriotism ; that we do not regard our country with the same eyes as we did twenty years ago ; and that in recent times we have made veritable strides in the consciousness and pride of nationality. Her Majesty's Jubilee was a mile-stone by which to measure our progress in this respect. It was more than a mile-stone. It provoked a splendid explosion of loyalty and national solidarity. Who does not remember it with pleasure? Those were halcyon days in June. Peace and goodwill were uppermost in every mind. Old men who are now lads will one day tell of the strange lull which fell on all British lands and held them for a time enchanted by the magic of lofty womanhood. It is a good thing to have seen the Jubilee.

 

The revival of nationalities is one of the characteristic features of the second half of this century. St. Simon in the forties proclaimed a message of fraternity to the proletarians of the world. In Germany too at the same time frontiers were regarded by some as temporary embarrassments. The English expected to absorb the French Canadians in this province. Those ideas are abandoned now. France and Germany have relegated fraternization to lunar politics. The French Canadians, far from being absorbed, even discuss the prospect of the peaceful recapture of this country, and in their more sanguine moments, of this continent. The map of Germany, which, as some one has said, used to look as if it had been smitten with a tetter, now includes in one broad border a united and powerful empire. Italy is re-united and has recovered its ancient capital. Austria, that fantastic and barbarous conglomeration of nationalities, is in the throes of disintegration owing to the revival of racial interests. On all sides the nations are regrouping themselves and the tie of blood is the strongest. That is the characteristic of our time. Now, if a wave of national spirit were to sweep over Canada, if Canadians should decide to remember their proud lineage and claim the duties and responsibilities of a mature people, they would at least march with the general course of contemporary history. The twentieth century is at our doors. Why should not Canada play it in to the music of a grand imperial overture?

 

Canadian patriotism has several aspects.

 

There is first and foremost the love of our own country, of our birth-place, Canadian patriotism in the narrower sense of the word ; then there is love of the country from which we came, British patriotism ; and lastly there is a still undefined, dimly perceptible emotion of sympathy with the aspirations and welfare of all sections of the British Empire, Imperial patriotism. A still larger political unit is possible. If the two greatest branches of the English family should ever re unite, we should have to raise our minds to the height of a patriotism which would be co-extensive with Anglo-Saxondom itself. I believe such expectations are idle dreams. History can not be rolled back. The American Union may ramify, it will never be regrafted on the parent stem. But even if such reunion be impossible, a good and cordial understanding between the two peoples is not. The American people are in the essentials English still, for a nation is rooted in its past and one or two generations add little to the accumulated stock. That the Americans are so unwilling to recognize the claim of kinship is a thing which we Canadians can not understand. Their ancestors were Englishmen when Bacon wrote and Lord Howard fought. The Americans share in the glory of the defeat of the Armada just as truly as we do. Deprive them of Shakespeare, the Englishman, their countryman as well as ours, and they would be born into a depleted intellectual inheritance. The achievements of Alfred the Great, of Chaucer, of the Black Prince,—all Englishmen—are in every sense of the word the heritage of Americans as well. The American people lost at Hastings and won at Crécy and Poictiers, and it is British men who are subduing nature throughout the wide territories of the United States.

 

Firstly, Canadian Patriotism.

 

Our ancestors were not driven from their homes by religious persecution, like the New England Puritans. They did not come to Canada to obtain liberty ; they wished to obtain a share of the unoccupied Canadian estate and to better themselves. If their ambition has been realized, we, their descendants, have every cause to be satisfied, if not, to be disappointed. Let us see of what the material resources of Canada consist.

 

We possess the half of North America. I do not think it advisable to dwell on this fact, because certain awkward questions might be put with regard to the value of our northernmost possessions, our Mackenzie, Baffin Land, Prince Albert Land, Banks Land. There are barren lands to be omitted, but to the south of these we have the finest wheat-growing country in the world. In one section of Canada alone (the so-called fertile belt extending between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky Mountains and between the North Branch of the Saskatchewan and the International Boundary) we possess, according to Mr. Burgess, about 250 million acres fit for agricultural and pastoral purposes, of which only a small amount has yet been taken up by settlers.

 

The value of this land will soon be greatly increased, for the first-rate wheat lands on the other side of the Border already show signs of exhaustion.

 

Next to agriculture comes "lumbering." The annual product of lumber is valued at over one hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars. The destruction of our forests, it is true, is proceeding at an alarming rate. Fires, which cut off vast numbers of young trees, do even more harm than the lumbermen. The end of the white pine is considered to be within measurable distance. Mr. Macoun of the Geological Survey states that twenty-five years ago two hundred thousand square miles of the Algoma district were a solid coniferous forest. To-day this block is completely denuded. The same tale must be told of the Rockies and the Selkirks. The loss and waste have been enormous. Nevertheless Mr. Macoun estimates that we still possess a forest belt which extends from the watershed of Labrador to the mouth of the Mackenzie, a belt which, although comparatively narrow near the Atlantic coast, stretches in the meridian of Lake Winnipeg from Lat. 50 to Lat. 58 and at the base of the Rocky Mountains from Lat. 53 to Lat. 67. In round numbers this belt contains one million, five hundred thousand square miles of pine, spruce, tamarack, and aspen poplar. The value of these woods is greatly enhanced by the fact that the forests of the United States—of Maine and the Saginaw valley, for instance—are diminishing rapidly, and that the only natural and available source of supply for certain sections of our neighbour's territory, for the treeless prairies of the West, will in a short time be on our side of the line.

 

The growth of mining has until recent years been very low in Canada, owing to lack of population and to the fact that the centres of population do not lie in the mining country, but in recent years it has been rapid, the total output having almost trebled in twelve years. We have gold in plenty. According to Mr. Ogilvie, the Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks alone contain 75 millions worth, and, as .for nickel, our only competitor is the French penal colony of New Caledonia, which produces less than we do. The Sudbury mines contain enough nickel ore to supply the world. Steel is so much improved for purposes of armour and for propeller shafts by an addition of four or five per cent of nickel, that the future of this industry will be enormous. Iron mining is not yet extensive, but vast deposits of iron ore are said to exist in Labrador. Nova Scotia and British Columbia have coal. Between Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains there are estimated to be sixty thousand square miles of coal deposits. In the foot-hills of the Rockies this coal is of good quality. The Province of Quebec produces nearly all the asbestos used in the world. Prof. Coleman, of the School of Practical Science in Toronto, says that there is no reason to suppose that the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia will prove less rich in metals than similar areas in the country to the south.

 

Prof. Prince, the Dominion Commissioner of Fisheries, claims that the Canadian fisheries are the most vast and varied in the world. The fishing waters include a coast line of eighteen thousand miles on the Atlantic and Pacific, and an area of more than seventy thousand square miles ithin the British boundary line on the great lakes. To these enormous superficies must be added great rivers like the Saint Lawrence, the Mackenzie, the Saskatchewan, each at least two thousand miles long, and many others of the rank of the Ottawa. I can not refrain from quoting from Prof. Prince's tables the wonderful and succulent list of the occupants of our waters. In the Atlantic divisions we have cod, mackerel, haddock, halibut, herring, lobster, oyster, eal and white whale ; in the estuarine and inland waters of the Maritime Provinces, salmon, shad, gaspereaux, striped bass, smelt, ouananiche, lake-trout, maskinongé, etc ; in the Great Lakes and tributaries, whitefish, great-lake trout, lake herring, sturgeon, pike-perch, black bass, brook-trout, maskinongé, etc ; in the western waters, in addition to many of those already mentioned, we have tullibee, pike, gold-eye, a number of species of salmon, skill, oolachan, anchovy, shark, dogfish, walrus, the "inconnu", suckers, and lastly an animal which we are glad to see that our statesmen are not forgetting, the fur-bearing seal.

 

Our country produces very beautiful and valuable furs as well. The furs of the Hudson's Bay Company realize a large sum annually in London at the auction sales, and we all know how much they contribute to a winter scene in Montreal and Quebec.

 

All the provinces of Canada are in parts well adapted for stock-raising. The Province of Quebec leads the continent in dairying, and, according to Dr. McEachran, Chief Inspector of stock for Canada, Southern Alberta (that is to say the foot-hills of the Rockies), is a veritable cattle's paradise, where the sunshine is bright, the vegetation abundant, the climate temperate both during summer and winter, and the air dry and exhilarating. Furthermore, according to the same authority, there are no cattle in the world so healthy as the Canadian.

 

The climates of Canada are suited to European peoples. In British Columbia we have moisture and a moderate temperature. To the east of the Rockies there are extremes of heat and cold, but the atmosphere is dry, bracing, and healthy. The Great Lakes temper the rigour of the winters in their neighbourhood. In this Province our climate is in the main pleasant, even although our mean temperature for January, as Mr. Stewart states, is five degrees lower than in St. Petersburg, for August six higher. In the Maritime Provinces the thermometer has a smaller range than with us in Quebec. The Great Lakes do not freeze over, although the most of the harbours freeze. In the Bay. of Fundy and on the Nova Scotia coast harbours are open all the year round. Canada is a country of clear skies. "We have more sunshine than the English or the Germans, in short, than the peoples to whom we look for immigrants.

 

These are roughly speaking our material assets. Some of them are already available, an incomparably larger part remains to be developed. Canada has a great future. It will one day be wealthy and powerful.

 

Our assets of the higher character are less imposing. Canada has, it is true, a very admirable and picturesque history, a double history. The French régime furnishes records of black-browed explorers and fearless missionaries, of bold coureurs du bois, and gallant (fleurdelise) officers, of dignified, courtly seigneurs and self-sacrificing, well-born ladies, of wards of the "far-flung" forts (to use a word of Rudyard's), and a levée en masse to save the fatherland in danger long before Danton had familiarized Frenchmen with the idea. The history of English Canadians shows less colour and romance, but is worthy of the Imperial ruling stock from which they came. They have transformed disaffection into loyalty. They have occupied, united, and administered in a manner which promises peace with permanence, the great provinces and territories which have been transferred to them by the British Crown. They have held all that they received and they have started it on a course of prodigious development. They have founded a dozen universities, small and great. Both the French and the English sections of the Canadian people have a literature. French littérateurs have been crowned by the French Academy. English speaking authors have won fame and reputation in England and the United States. Indeed it is claimed in the Canadian Review that no country has produced proportionately so many volumes of verse as Canada. Thus, if Mr. John Cooper's statement is correct, Canada has produced a greater quantity of poetry than the England of Shakespeare. Another enthusiast, probably an Ontarian, claims that Canada possesses the “grandest system of education in the world." Furthermore Canadians have twice defended this country successfully against overwhelming odds. They have shown

that a people of military qualities and peaceful instincts,, when aroused by the invasion of its land and hearths, is-practically invincible. And lastly, if we look away from institutions and achievements and turn our attention to the living man, the source of all activity, we find a population which without exaggeration may be described as healthy, right-minded, laborious, brave and intelligent, purer in strain than that of our neighbours to the South, because drawn almost entirely from two great kingdoms which for centuries have stood in the van of European civilization.

 

Two great kingdoms. Two peoples, speaking different languages, reading different literatures, professing one may say different religions, cherishing with equal tenacity their rival traditions. I must pause here for a moment and perhaps even retrace my steps, for the first element of strength is union, and at the very threshold of this subject we are confronted with a formidable dualism. Let us try to understand it.

 

In the national situation of the French Canadian as reflected in his literature we find all the elements of a highly complex state of feeling. That it is possible to survey this field intelligently is due to the fact that one of these elements has obtained complete preponderance over the others.

 

The French Canadian loves (when he makes an effort of memory) the France of Champlain, Marie de l'Incarnation, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Brébenf, Lallemand, Frontenac,. Montcalm, Levis ; he hates (likewise when he makes an effort of memory) the corrupt and dissolute court which, as he believes, traded him off like a cheap article of commerce, betraying him after his heroic struggle for independence ; he is bewildered by modern France with its atheism and its "literature of desperation" ; he looks askance on the intruding Saxon who dwells on the hill of commercial prosperity while he the pioneer dwells in the vale ; he recognizes that under no other flag and in no possible situation could he enjoy the peace, security and liberty which he possesses under British rule ; he is profoundly attached to his own people and his Church, he gives his heart to them alone. England and France are both far away. The French Canadians are loyal British subjects, but they felt no thrill of pride when they read the story of the charge of Dargai ridge. The French Canadians are proud of their Gallic blood and lineage, but they will never shed a drop of blood for France. French Canada has their love. French Canada is almost the only subject of their very prolific authors, and this is so true that without much exaggeration French Canadian literature, which reflects so faithfully the varying moods of the French Canadian people, might be called a literature of one idea. The Repertoire National, for instance, which contains the poetry produced in French Canada prior to 1848, has only one important characteristic, Patriotism. The poets, the novelists, the historians of a later period : Lemay, Suite, Frechette in his fiery, aggressive style, Crémazie in long-drawn plaint and graceful refrain, Gérin-Lajoie, de Gaspé, Taché, Bourassa, in their narratives of French Canadian life, manners, heroism and virtues, Garneau with eloquence and a commendable frankness in his History, announce but one message. At the National Festivities held for many years on the 24th of June in Eastern, Western and Southern centres there was but one theme. I look through Chouinard's Fête Nationale des Canadiens-Français, célébrée à Québec, de 1881 à 1889, and I find five hundred pages of manifestoes, letters and speeches. Many of these appeals are really eloquent. They are all in earnest. From cover to cover the same few capital ideas are inculcated, union, fidelity to the French language, to French institutions, to the Church. The fundamental conception of a Catholic French nationality in North America is never forgotten. I do not suppose there is another example to be found of a like concentration of national energy on the conservation of national characteristics.

 

With the national aspirations of the French Canadian people the English Canadians no longer have any quarrel. There was a time when they hoped that the two races might be welded into one and that the French language might disappear from Canada. No sane man dreams of such a thing now. "When sixty thousand people grow in five generations to more than two millions and advance from timid reclamations to a bold stand on the basis of equal rights, it is quite evident that the time to talk of absorption has gone and gone for ever. The French language has won for itself droit de cité. There are still some (they used to be heard through the Toronto Mail) who view with apprehension the rise of a nationality in imperfect sympathy with British institutions, but the more thoughtful Canadians, those who have studied French Canadian history, would be loth to see a people disappear which did the rough work of pioneering in such noble fashion. They would even recognize that the clergy, at the price of their blood freely shed in Indian villages, has purchased certain prescriptive rights to the possession of the Canadian flock. On the other hand it is apparent, and it is freely admitted by the better class of the French, that their political development was possible and their privileges obtainable under British rule alone. Not certainly in the United States where their laws and the official status of their language would disappear in a night, not under Germany which drags the sons of Frenchmen to German schools and into German ranks, nor even under old France where priests and nuns are hunted from their own doors, where according to Montalembert there never was the liberty which French Canadians have acquired under another flag.

 

This then is the situation of which the new Canadian patriotism must take account. Two great peoples, each representing high traditions, jealous of their dignity and their nationality, are citizens of a common country. They have fought in the field, in councils, and by their votes. The great questions which divided them in the past are no longer living issues. Both feel that the old system is insufficient, the old methods are antiquated, the old lines of demarcation obliterated. They are endeavouring to adjust themselves to the new conditions, they are seeking for new conceptions of their country, and when the solution is found they will be well on their way towards the New Canadian Patriotism.

 

It is not for me to say here just what form the New Canadian Patriotism towards which we are tending, will assume, but I may say with certainty and without presumption that it will rest on the corner-stone of concord and honorable emulation between the French and English sections of our people, upon common devotion to a common country. The English in the new time will realize more clearly and more sympathetically that the French people were placed in a cruel position by the Treaty of Paris, which robbed them of their army, nobility, merchants, lawyers, and mother-country, which cut them off from the intellectual centre of their race, that the French are entitled by their success in an unequal battle to our respect, and that national sentiment is an almost indestructible thing. The French on the other hand may be fairly called on to enlarge their ideas of country.

 

What are the boundaries of the French Canadian's country and who are its citizens? Does Canada lie between the Ottawa river and the Gulf ? No ! the fatherland must be larger than that. We call on the French Canadian to abandon his provincial patriotism, his village pride, to rise to the conception of a Canada which extends from the rock-bound shores of Cape Breton to the land of primroses and larks and open harbours by the far Pacific. The waters, the mines, the forests, the soil of this great land call for the toil and skill of all Canadians. Let the Frenchman establish himself in it with his arts and the expansive genius of his race. Let him take along with him his language, his religion, and his patriotism, not however the patriotism which excludes and estranges, but the patriotism which quickens, not the patriotism which calls English Canadians, as "certain of their poets have fabled," aliens and foreigners, but the patriotism which sees in every Canadian a fellow-countryman. The English are not strangers in Canada. Our fathers won the land honourably. The British flag flies over it and we are no aliens. We are Canadians. We recognize no monopoly of this name. It is by this honoured name that we insist on being called.

 

Secondly, British Patriotism.

 

A free, self-governing Canada, a Canada in the service of which all Canadians may feel themselves one, exists, but Canada is something more. It is an important part of the British Empire. This aspect of our national existence implies a widening of the outlook. We are firstly Canadian patriots, and I would like to add that nothing in the international relations of Canada on which I am about to touch, invalidates the claim which it makes on all its citizens to join hands in enthusiastic union for the common good. We are also British patriots and British patriotism implies Imperial patriotism. For if the other British colonies follow the lead of Canada (I say follow the lead of Canada, not only because Canada has in recent times led the way in inaugurating the Imperial period, but because as a confederation it is admitted by the British people to rank above the isolated Australian colonies), then the bond which attaches them to the mother-country will also attach us all to one another.

 

Sir John Seeley in his Expansion of England, an epoch-making work in Imperial matters, shows that the modern state necessarily colonizes in a different way from the Greek state. To the Greek mind State and City were identical terms. The city was the unit. He who left the City left the State and helped to form a new state. But the modern usage is to consider emigrants as carrying the State along with them. "Where Frenchmen go, France goes." Where Englishmen go, there is England. According to this view Canada would be as integral a part of England as the County of Kent, and the question of its severance from the British Crown would be as little entertained as the proclamation of the independence of Kent. If this idea had prevailed, there would be no Canadian question, no Imperial Federation. Canadians would simply be Britishers over seas. This idea, however, says Seeley, became mixed up with another idea drawn from the practice of the most harsh and despotic of colonizing powers, the Spanish Monarchy. The Colony in the New "World, which, according to the one view, was merely an extension of the motherland, an immense shire added to its territory, was, according to the other and more Spanish view of it (and the distance of the colonies from the central point of government gave the preponderance to this latter conception) a dependency, a possession, a something therefore to be used for the benefit of the possessor. The colonies, the American colonies for instance, were regarded as a source of wealth and valued as such. The colonies found a profitable market in England as well. Mutual interest united each to the other, and in spite of the natural bonds of blood and religion, the lack or imagined lack of such mutual interest caused them in time to separate. Interests insisted on being considered. On account of the transition stage through which we are passing, the same question of interest must also be considered to-day. Does the British connection pay, is the vulgar way to put it. The question in itself is not a vulgar one. Will the maintenance of English rule conduce to the happiness, the true interests, the intellectual and moral as well as the material interests of the great people which is destined to occupy this continent? This question is usually, I am glad to see, answered unhesitatingly in the affirmative. There are some, however, who do not answer it in the affirmative, for instance, Mr. Goldwin Smith. Now it is the fashion to abuse Mr. Smith for his opinions, and it is hard to deny that he is a poor Britisher and an unfair disputant, but even the devil, as some one has said, has his good points, (we might all imitate his perseverance) and this persistent advocatus diaboli and troublesome annexationist is entitled to some credit for having insisted that the interests of the Canadian people should come up for discussion, and that no decision should be reached until all the arguments for and against had been heard. For the future of a great country is too large a matter to be trilled with. In one hundred years we may have a population as great as that of the American Republic at the present time. The welfare of these seventy millions of people must take precedence of all other questions. Even loyalty must bow before such might issues as these. They are enormous,, inconceivably vast. Compared with them a few highsounding titles and lucrative positions for hungry politicians are of small moment. There is a certain class of men who are incapable of seeing anything from any other than a personal stand-point. There are men, for instance, who, in their anxiety to make money out of a rapidly increasing population, would throw open our doors to the riff-raff of the gorged centres of older lands. It is a matter of indifference to them that these incapables will become the fathers of the Canadians of the future, and that the character of the Canadian people for all time will be determined by the class of emigrants whom we entice in the two next decades to our shores. They do not care for the greatness of this nation. They care only for themselves. Now, I repeat, not the interests of certain individuals possessed by a pardonable desire to get on in the world, but the welfare of the whole Canadian people shall be considered in the settlement of these questions. Canadians will insist that the right to join the Canadian ranks be treated as if it were a privilege, and be granted only to those who are worthy of it, and Canadians looking back over past years may readily admit that the momentous question of our political relations to the United States was entitled to the fullest discussion and that every side light which could be thrown upon it was worthy of attention. The question of annexation is settled now. It has not been settled by argument alone. Events have marched over the heads of the annexationists. They are submerged by the practical unanimity of Canadians. We are not to be Americans, but Britishers, and this conclusion of the Canadian people finds itself to be in accordance with those principles which Seeley laid down, the principle of the nation's best and highest interests. Our interests are drawing us steadily towards our political head-quarters, our interests of the higher as well as of the lower order, on the one hand increase of trade, and on the other, for instance, the rise of a star of the first magnitude above the horizon, Rudyard Kipling, the Anglo-Indian, and yet a countryman of our own.

 

Let me touch very briefly, for this is a subject which I would rather leave to the practical business man, on the main interests which bind us to Great Britain. Trade follows the flag. This law is not always admitted, but the fact that in Jubilee year our exports to England have increased by many millions seems to prove that it applies to Canada, and it is more than probable that if Britain should ever adopt a protective tariff, we, as colonists (no, not as colonists, but to copy the words of Lord Rosebery, as parts of the British Empire), should receive preferential treatment. Furthermore the flag will bring us population. The validity of this law is likewise disputed. It is pointed out that there were in 1890 three times as many natives of the United Kingdom living in the United States as in the whole of the British colonies together, and that from 1852 up to comparatively recent times emigration from the United Kingdom to the whole of British North America was about ten per cent of the total British emigration, whilst nearly seventy per cent went to the United States. On the other hand, the British emigration to Canada up to a period between 1830 and 1840 actually exceeded the emigration to the territories of our neighbours, and is it forgotten that one hundred thousand United Empire Loyalists, the very best blood of the old American colonies, and a very large fraction of their total population, made great sacrifices in order to be once more in a British country? Finally, let any man examine himself, let him remember his conversations with friends, and it will be seen that patriotic considerations have been and are especially at the present time acting as a strong deterrent to emigration. Again, the British connection by increasing the security of investments, lowers, (does it not ?) the rate at which capital can be obtained. There are minor advantages such as the commissions offered by the British army to our young men with the fighting instinct, but I will come at once to the major interest of the British-Canadian union, defence. Among sea-faring peoples Canada occupies the fifth place. Our ships go to all quarters of the globe. The Canadian Shipmaster, says Dr. Parkin, knows that at Malta or Melbourne, at the Cape or Auckland, he can claim the protection of the national flag, he has a right to apply to the British consul and can rely on the prestige of the British name. In the last few years Canadian trade with Japan and Australia has been quadrupled. What protection could the Canadian navy furnish in Oriental waters or even in our own inland waters ? The fact is that we Canadians have enjoyed so long a period of peace that we have ceased to believe in the possibility of war. Lulling ourselves to rest in the consciousness of pacific intentions, we have come to consider Canada as exempt from danger. But, as Sir Charles Dilke has pointed out in his little volume on Imperial Defence, war is not always unjust, on the contrary war is imposed on states by an irreconcilable opposition of purposes. Peace cannot be secured by a policy which adopts it as a supreme end. If a government is not prepared to fight, there can be no limit to the concessions which must be made to avoid a quarrel, for whenever the point comes at which concession is refused, the quarrel will be there. It is certain that pacific intentions are a poor protection against aggression, and it is a delusion for us to expect to escape the universal lot. No nation can exist except by enforcing respect for its power. At any time questions might arise embroiling us with European nations. Canadian citizens may need protection in South America, or the Mediterranean. In particular we have bold and determined neighbours, who are difficult enough to deal with and whom the exigencies of party politics might compel to undertake a campaign aiming at the absorption of Canada. To oppose them we have our Canadian militia of less than forty thousand men and our few hundreds of Canadian regulars. For every adult man of our country the Americans possess twelve capable of bearing arms. In presence of a people so powerful, composed of such heterogeneous elements, so uncertain of its own future, what do you think would be the lot of our unsupported country of less than one twelfth of the American numerical strength ? We should be like the proud but weak Spaniards, condemned to choose between submission with or without a battle.

 

That we cannot become the sport of ambitious politicians, that we are conscious of strength and national dignity, which implies individual manhood, that we are not despised but that we can hold our heads erect, we owe to that ubiquitous agent of civilization and enlightenment, that mighty protecting hand of justice in all the world, that screen and defence of all British subjects and all British colonies, the British navy. "To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering" says Milton. "It is excellent", says Shakespeare, "to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant". "We rejoice in the strong man's strength and our strength is the strength of the sea-power of Britain, our protector is the mother of nations in the little isles girt by the silver sea. But that is not all. This island kingdom which waged more than one great war for the possession of the Canadian landed estate, spending blood and treasure like water, has transferred to us the whole of this estate without encumbrance, thus making a concession unheard of in the affairs of nations. It gave us our various forms of religion. It was the home of those great British-Canadians, Shakespeare, Bacon, Elizabeth, Sidney, Raleigh, Drake, Howard, Cromwell, Milton, Bunyan, John Knox, Burns, Scott and Carlyle. To our own political and literary and social life, which I am far from wishing to depreciate, it adds that of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. It makes us share in the glory of taming the savagery of the dark places of the earth, it enables us to participate in all the renown of English letters with their mighty traditions and their splendid future.

 

In presence of such an array of moral and material interests, what is to be the attitude of the new Canadian patriot? There are four possible plans to choose from—Annexation, Independence, a continuance of the present status, and a closer union to Great Britain which might possibly result in Imperial Federation. Annexation is as extinct as the dodo. Independence at the present time is to say the least impracticable. Independence would involve the surrender of the enormous advantages of which I have just spoken. Canada would have to forego her aspirations as a commercial, maritime power, or imitate the example of Chili, and organize at vast expense a naval force, which for want of naval bases would be practically powerless 2000 miles away from Canadian shores. Reason and experience, says De Tocqueville, prove that no commercial prosperity can be durable, if it cannot be united in case of need to naval force. Independence would combine the extreme of political insignificance with the extreme of political peril.

 

Between the third and fourth alternatives the minds of a great many men are fluctuating. The advantages of the present system are so numerous and so great that it is perhaps true to say that the majority of Canadians desire no changes made. A closer identification with Imperial interests might increase the already existing danger of being drawn into Imperial wars in which Canada has no concern. The Venezuelan question is too recent to be forgotten. If you question these contented patriots, they will reply with a shrug of the shoulders which signifies that having made an extravagantly good bargain they would be fools to draw attention to it. The New Canadian Patriot however—young Canada—rather than await calls such as have not been altogether wanting from the other side of the water, to proportion our contributions to our growing resources, will go. to meet our manifestly inevitable destiny. The New Canadian Patriot does not wish to leave any longer unacknowledged the immense debt incurred by Great Britain in her long battle for the North American estate and in her long unremunerated protection. The New Canadian Patriotism will not consent to be excluded from great international questions. It will claim to be heard in the councils of Nations. It will call for closer union with Great Britain and a consolidation of Imperial strength. It will not refuse its consent to a more equitable distribution of burdens. I have no politics on this platform to-night, but I rejoice as a Canadian when I see a true British patriot like Sir Wilfrid Laurier take the initiative in Imperial legislation. I think that the success of his past departures indicates that, with some education by a patriotic press, the people of Canada would approve of still further steps being taken, and that it might be even a very clever stroke of policy to announce that Canada had made a direct offer of assistance, such as Natal has done, to the British forces. I know that Canadian ministers are fond of expressing themselves on these matters in general terms, that they shrink from proposing any definite line of action. I know too that Sir Charles Tupper supports the view that Canada has already, by the construction of her railways and canals and the support of her militia, established Imperial highways which England might find to be almost essential for the maintenance of her power in the East. But the English might well reply, like Harpagon, Je voudrais toucher quelque chose, and nothing will convince the plain man that these laboriously accumulated contributions to British causes liable to be lost to Britain on the assumption of Canadian independence, those services rendered without any thought of the recipient, paid for in great part with the price of lands which were themselves a British gift, are equivalent to the maintenance of ships and regiments available for service in various parts of the world. The New Canadian Patriotism, it seems to me, will go further than this. I have spoken to many Canadians on this subject and in reply to the question : Would you be willing to pay increased taxes in order to contribute to the British Navy ? I have yet to receive a negative answer. The time will soon come, if indeed it be not already here, in which the policy outlined with such foresight by the Hon. Joseph Howe, materially advanced in his own way by the late Sir John Macdonald, supported too by Sir Charles Tupper, produced so brilliantly, with a master's eye to the mise en scène, by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to mention only the most eminent of many distinguished Imperialists, will receive its grand consummation in a scheme whereby Canadians will imprint their stamp on civilization throughout the world, at the same time that they tighten the bond which represents the higher ideas of loyalty, gratitude, filial piety. For, inspired by the New Patriotism, Canadians will work out their destiny as loyal, but ambitious subjects of the British crown, shaping and readjusting the precise form of the relation to suit the needs and aspirations of the hour. Sir Wilfrid may be right in saying that, if he were a young man, he would look forward to sitting as the representative of a Canadian constituency in the Parliament at Westminster. Or, perhaps, a reorganization of our forces under Imperial direction and a consequent military offensive and defensive union may be the first practical outcome of the new politics. Kipling in his admirable Song of the English in the Seven Seas says, I think, all that can be said with certainty at the present time. "We that were bred overseas, we who are neither feeble nor few, wait and would speak with our kin."

 

"Not in the dark do we fight—haggle and flout and gibe ; Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. Gifts have we only to-day—Love without promise or fee"

 

And from the "gray mother who bore us at her knees" we would hear the words :

"Look, I have made ye a place and opened wide the doors, That ye may talk together, your Barons and Councillors.

 

And the law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands. The law that ye make shall be law and I do not press my will, Because you are sons of the Blood and call me mother still."