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imminence of war in Europe, or when from ternal causes she happens to be acutely feeling the conmercial atrophy to which her isolation condemns her. Canadians who live on the border, and who from the shape of the country form a large portion of the population, have always before their eyes the fields and cities of a kindred people, whose immense prosperity they are prevented from sharing only by a political line, while socially, and in every other respect, the identity and even be fusion is complete. . . . Union with the rest of the race on this continent, under the sanction of the mother country, would not really be a breach of affection for her. . . . It would be no mere a breach of affection than the naturalization, now fully recognized by British law, of multitudes both of Englishmen and of Canadians in the United States. Let us suppose that the calamitous rupture of the last century had never taken place, that the whole race on this continent had remained united, and had parted, when the time came, from the mother country in peace: where would the outrage in love or loyalty have been? Admitted into the councils of their own continent, and exercising their fair share of influence there, Canadians would render the mother country the best of all services, and the only service in their power, by neutralizing the votes of her enemies."
The secret of the sudden dissolution of Parliament this year instead of next, is that Sir John Macdonald is always very prompt in recognizing a trump card in the hands of his opponents; and he foresaw very clearly that the Canadian people, especially the farmers, were be coming very dissatisfied with the so-called National Policy, and were suffering very keenly on account of being shut out of their legitimate market to the south of them. The sentiment of the country in favor of free trade with the United States is unmistakable; in Manitoba and the Northwest, the farmers are handicapped and impoverished by the necessity of sending their products two thousand miles to the Canadian eastern seaboard, instead of a few hundred miles due south; and in Ontario and Quebec the enormous growth of the loan associations, and the miles and miles of mortgaged homesteads tell their own story. Sir John Macdonald knew that in 1892 there could be but one great issue before the country, and that would be free trade with the United States. The recent passage of the McKinley Bill afforded a side issue, which he was wily enough to see, in the angered state of the Canadian people, would effectually blind them to their own interests, and secure for him a new lease of political life. In order to procure a dissolution of parliament, which, according to constitutional usage, is only permissible when a government has not a working majority or has just been defeated upon an important measure, Sir John resorted to the subterfuge of declaring that the government was anxious to negotiate for more favorable trade relations with the United States than those at present existing, and for this purpose considered it necessary to go to the country on the question, and consider it with a newly elected parliament. This was practically an attempt on the part of the government to borrow from the liberal party the chief plank in its platform, make a political dodge of it, and then, as events will probably show, discreetly drop it; or bring the pretence to an abrupt conclusion by sending a delegation to Washington, that will make proposals which Sir John knows very well will not be seriously entertained for a moment.
Sir John has a great deal of Lord Beaconsfield's shrewd perception of the right moment to take advantage of a strong change in the popular sentiment; and he somersaults on all questions at just such a moment as will insure him a return of the public confidence and enable him to ride again into office on the back of his opponents' policy: The liberals for years have been committed to unrestricted reciprocity and free trade with the United States, while the conservative government has done everything in its power to force an artificial commercial intercourse between the different provinces of the Dominion, and keep trade from floating in its natural channels north and south.
It is a government of a plutocracy, tempered by the theocratic influence of Quebec. The chief supporters of the Macdonald government are the wealthy manufacturers—a class which is endeavoring to arrogate to itself the absolutism and the autocracy of the old world hereditary "aristocracy," and which has no principle whatever but toryism and dollars, if these things may stand for principles. This class, as in previous elections, was the main sup-