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responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this land."

It is worthy of remark that Canada and the United States have not yet come to "an honorable and speedy settlement" of the fisheries' question; and they never will until Canada can act with entire independence of Great Britain.

The utter dissimilarity in the point of view and aims of native born Canadians and Englishmen is especially marked in Ontario and Manitoba, the two greatest provinces of the Dominion, where the scheme of existence and the popular pulse are such that the traveller immediately perceives the influence of the neighboring republic. The difference between the farmers of Dakota and Manitoba is so subtile that, if one did not know positively on which side of the line one was, one would certainly become confused as to their nationality. Any intelligent observer, who has had frequent opportunities of visiting the cities growing up in the West on both sides of the line, must have been impressed with the Canadian duplication of American manners, methods, and aims.

The subsidized government organs of Eastern Canada, which preach that the remedy for Canada's commercial disabilities is the stopping of railroad traffic in its natural channels north and south, and the opening of a stage coach line to the antipodes, have no influence in Manitoba or the Maritime Provinces, and very little in Ontario, the most progressive commonwealth in the Dominion.

The people in the northwest are cramped by the tariff at every turn, and they know that Canada's natural market is to the south. In comparison with that market, England, Australia, Japan, and all the other British colonies are insignificant, because the cost of transportation is prohibitive to Canadian producers, who are, to begin with, in the hands of a "national" railroad which discriminates in favor of their rivals in trade. Two-thirds of the Canadian exports go to the United States to-day, even with a prohibitive line of custom houses on the border, and a free market across the Atlantic. In the West, the people, unable to get their products into the American market at their doors without paying heavy duties, and nearly two thousand miles away from their own eastern seaboard, without any railroad competition to keep down rates, make no pretence about it. They want annexation, and are not afraid to say so. And what is somewhat peculiar, many of the settlers who have gone to the West direct from England are the most ardent disciples of the leaders of the agitation, a circumstance which shows that in these days of a generally diffused cosmopolitanism, the love of the almighty dollar is not a peculiarly American trait.

In politics the similarity of the Canadian ideas to those that obtain in the United States is very marked. The standard of political ethics on both sides of the line is deplorably low. It is resolved for the most part into a scramble for the loaves and fishes. Politics have degenerated into a profession, and its professors do not live in the odor of sanctity. As for principles—one only hears of them during general elections. The object of government is to remain in office, and the value of "burning questions" is reckoned by ballot returns. Virtue is only to be found on the opposition benches, whichever party is in power.

A favorite argument of the opponents of commercial and political union with the United States is that the boundaries dividing all countries are always arbitrary, unless they are formed by the sea, as in the case of Great Britain and Australia. It is argued that the United States and Canada can grow up as separate nations just the same as France and Belgium and the other continental countries of Europe. The chain of great lakes between the two countries is also mentioned as an evidence that Nature intended them to separate. One might as well argue that the river Thames is a natural boundary for the separation of the interests of Londoners on the Middlesex and Surrey sides. The great lakes, with the irenormous traffic, are the strongest link in the argument for annexation. It is proved by the annual shipping statistics that there is a larger traffic on these lakes during the short season of six months they are open than there is