“Remark. It is belief in that bright destiny of Northern free nations which binds Britain, Canada, and other Colonies together. They will not separate. For Britain to willfully pluck her Empire in pieces to set up new nations in conformity to some theory of magnanimity, is an offence to the simplest principles of political philosophy. Were Canada to demand separation, and obtain it; or were she cut adrift, the inevitable fate of absorption, by her more powerful neighbour, and extinction of political existence, would follow. The integrity and perennial vigour of the British empire should be the lofty political faith of all Conservatives and rational Reformers whether at home or in the colonies. And they who desire the permanence of British stability, or deserve the personal safety and freedom guaranteed by imperial laws, and by institutions at once venerable, and youthfully elastic in their adaptability to new circumstances, must by a logical necessity—if they hold any settled conservative principle—cherish a sympathy for other free nations, and hold in abhorrence a rebellious appeal to arms to overturn constitutional government.
“New complications may occur between Britain and France, as well as between Canada and America. A recurrence of excitement about French invasion may any day arise with still deeper perplexities than at any time before. The Legislative Chamber at Paris has just been told by a noble member, a legitimist, not a Napoleonist, and so much the worse, that the thirteen hundred millions of francs, spent on the Crimean war would have carried the French army to London. The British uneasiness of 1858 ripened public sentiment in favour of an auxiliary army of volunteers. Other ‘tyrannicide’ pamphlets, as atrocious as that of 1858, may issue from London and inflame France. Again, the ‘French Colonels’ may demand permission of the Emperor, as in that year, to ‘hunt conspirators in their London dens.’
“In that hypothesis of complex difficulties, the Engineers and Guards, the Royal Artillery and regiments of the British Line, grandly efficient in quality, but inadequate in number even now, may be recalled to save the venerated soil of Britain from the track of invasion. But should they remain, as pray Heaven they may have no cause to go away nor any employment here; a mass levy of the male population will be an instant necessity in the event of war. The mass levy will be only a mob, yet indispensable, as a source from whence to draft selected levies, and to form working brigades to construct defences; to build Forts, for instance, beyond Toronto on the Yorkville side, and on the heights near Hamilton city, should Huron Lake and Georgian Bay be occupied by gun-boats and floating batteries from the arsenals at Chicago, and Green Bay; and Erie Lake, from docks and arsenals at Toledo and Buffalo. The sooner those Forts are raised after the enemy is at Georgian Bay, at Suspension Bridge, at Port Dover, Port Colborne and Port Dalhousie, the sounder may Toronto and Hamilton sleep in bed, if they can sleep at all.
“Concentrated on one point, or distributed to distant places in obedience to the exigencies of strategy, the rural aggregations of the mass levy, and the rural regiments of militia, while defending towns and cities from hostile occupation and ravage, may be told of their own undefended homesteads laid in ashes; barns plundered and pastures cleared of cattle; women and children fleeing to the wilderness distracted, or dying on the cinders of the homes, in which they live happily this day, believing that none dare make them afraid.
“And those aggregations of militia and volunteers, and the mass levy, in this newspaper-made war, may be told of such atrocities, when absent on the frontier service, or may see them after the occurrence. If they do, the fiercest spirits in Canada, not few in number, will volunteer with all the vehemence of revenge; or they may, in desperate frenzy, form expeditions on their own account, to make reprisal on the towns and country opposite. Offended humanity there, which is now as innocent of political feuds or evil intention to Canada, as any non-political farmer and his wife and baby on this side, will in turn cry for a reciprocity of vengeance. Patriotism on that side will be crime on this: the patriotism of Canada will be crime beyond the frontier. They who are least successful in devastation and in victory, will on their Fast days, pray to have a due sense of sin, and better success. The side which enjoys the highest satisfaction for defeats avoided, and battles won, will proclaim a day for thanksgiving and sky-rockets. And what wonder if Eternal Justice should leave them all to the consummation of their own wrath? The only warrant for hope, that they may not be utterly forsaken of merciful Heaven, rests on this; that they who are exposed the most to suffer such calamities are the least guilty in provoking war.
“On the frontier homes of Canada, two thousand miles of war-track. One thousand miles open to attack on the frontier of the States. On the one side and the other, three thousand miles of war, among cities, towns, hamlets, homesteads; tracks of plunder in the mansions of the wealthy; houses of the poor; iron safes of the merchants; strong vaults of the banks. Tracks of battle and of marching armies on fields of summer greenness; on harvests of ripe wheat. Tracks of blood on three thousand miles of death-bed snow.
“War-tracks of wreck, vessels and canals all a wreck, on lake, river and canal navigation. Mutual destruction along the frontier lines of railway, American and Canadian—populated Canada nearly all a frontier as yet.