Still more significant is the illustration if he remember that as regards food supply the Empire might, in an emergency, soon become entirely independent of foreign countries, while, with the single exception of cotton, we could tide over an indefinite period even in the matter of raw material for manufacture.
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CHAPTER V.
CANADA.
WHEN we come to regard our question from the colonial point of view the first place in any consideration must obviously be given to Canada. The national problem is there presented to us in a crucial form. The growth and consolidation of the Dominion have done more than anything else to make manifest the anomalous condition of the Empire. In it we have a colony with a population twice as large as the United States had when they became independent, larger than that of England in Elizabeth's time, or than that of some considerable European States at the present day. It is a population which has proved itself equal to the highest duties of citizenship. The slowness of earlier growth has not been without advantage, since it has unquestionably given steadiness and maturity to political thought. With comparative suddenness Canada has now caught the inspiration of a large national life. Vast undertakings in the direction of material progress are entered upon with confidence and executed with success. On political lines her people have been the first to prove by actual experiment {116} on a large scale the adaptability of a federal system to British methods of representative and responsible government. Since confederation was entered into nearly twenty-five years ago self-reliance has become the keynote of Canadian life and has produced its legitimate and ordinary results. In material development, in political organization, in the spirit of the people, the Dominion has reached the stage looked forward to by early thinkers on colonial problems as the one at which it might reasonably be expected to assume an independent national existence. It must therefore soon bring to the test the theories of these thinkers as to the results of national expansion.
The position of Canada is made unique among British colonies by another condition. She is so placed geographically that annexation to another kindred state is a manifestly possible alternative to either independence or continued British connection. Whether independence, annexation to the United States, or a closer and permanent union with the Empire is most consistent with the honour and interest of the Canadian people, and whether the separation of Canada from the Empire is a matter of indifference to the British nation at large, are questions to be here discussed.
Facts of geography, facts of history, and questions of trade relations, must enter chiefly into the consideration.
There is an advantage in giving the first place to geography.
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A glance at the map shows the relation of Canada to the Oceanic Empire of which it now forms a part. It fronts towards Europe on the Atlantic and towards Asia on the Pacific. On both oceans it gives the finest naval positions that a great maritime power could desire, and the only positions possible for British people on the American continent. A wonderful system of waterways penetrates, from the Atlantic frontage, unto the very heart of the continent, to prairies which are the greatest undeveloped wheat area in the world, lands capable of supporting a large population and of proved capacity to yield a vast surplus of food products. The trend of the Great Lakes and of the St. Lawrence towards the point which gives the shortest sea connection with Europe indicates the natural direction in which this food surplus will chiefly flow. Should the still open question of the summer navigation of Hudson's Bay by grain vessels be settled in the affirmative, even the facilities offered by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence for cheap transit would be eclipsed, and western wheat placed on English markets at a rate hitherto unknown. But this is a contingency, and it is perhaps better to confine the attention to settled facts.