The advantages, commercial and military, of a line of communication thus isolated and national, as compared with those which pass through or near the political storm-centres of Europe, are too obvious to require elaboration. Since 1887 a survey of this route has been going on, though far too slowly, under the direction of the Admiralty; groups of islands useful for operating the line have been annexed, and the laying of the cable seems only to depend on a more general recognition of its national necessity.
What has now been said indicates roughly Canada's geographical relation to the question of a united oceanic empire, of which she may fairly be regarded as the key-stone. What is next to be considered is {124} her relation to the great state which lies along her southern border, and which divides with her about equally the bulk of the North American continent. Here our study of the map must go hand in hand with the study of Canadian history.
A series of great lakes and rivers, and, for the rest, astronomical or arbitrary boundary lines, constitute the only geographical divisions between the United States and Canada. The political and moral line of separation is due to the fact that more than a century ago the colonies which formed the germ of the United States revolted and threw off their connection with Great Britain; those which formed the nucleus of Canada elected to remain united with the mother-land and to work out their political destiny in accordance with British institutions.
The geographical boundary, like those which divide many other nations, seems indefinite and artificial to the mere student of maps; it has been engraved deeply enough in the hearts of Canadian people. It had to be defended in 1775, and once more in the war of 1812, at much expense of life and treasure. Crossing it in 1783 and succeeding years, the persecuted Loyalists of the American Revolution found safety and freedom under the British flag[1]. Again it {125} had to be defended from the Fenians organized in 1866 on American soil. Fishing disputes and boundary disputes, embittered by Canadian dissatisfaction with the methods of American diplomacy, have kept attention fixed upon the line of national demarcation. Still more sharply has it been defined by national habits of thought. South of the line, for at least three-quarters of a century after the Revolution, on a thousand fourth of July platforms dislike and hatred of all things British have been studiously inculcated. Even now an appeal to anti-British feeling may decide the fate of a Presidential election, and has been the winning trick of party politics. North of the line, at every public gathering and on every public holiday up to the present moment, loyalty to the British nationality for which such sacrifices were made, and allegiance to institutions which have borne thoroughly the test of application in a new country, are recognized as of the very essence of the popular life. The mere suspicion that these principles were being trifled with by a few erratic and irresponsible members of a great and otherwise perfectly loyal political party has excluded that party from power for a period almost beyond the limit of political experience in British countries. It is scarcely possible to imagine conditions under which communities kindred in race, language, and {126} literature could have had a more decisive and divergent bias given to their history, to national traditions and enthusiasms, to everything that lies at the roots of individual political life. They have prevailed decisively against contiguity, against commercial intercourse, social intercourse, literary intercourse, against a considerable interchange of population. Those who know best the passions which control the popular mind in Canada are fixed in the belief that the retention of a political individuality independent of the United States has become the touchstone of Canadian national honour.
To understand why this is so we must recall and account for one primary fact, remarkable enough in itself and probably unique in history. We can easily understand that it requires no very marked natural boundary to form the line of division between nations which differ in language, religion, and descent, as in the case of European states. But in America we see that an almost purely artificial line of division has for more than a century been drawn across the breadth of a continent, and between two peoples who speak the same language, study the same literature, and are without any decisive distinctions of religious creed. There has been a great drawing together between the United States and Canada, as between England and Canada, during the last twenty-five years, but it is no greater in the one case than the other, and proceeds on social and literary, not on political lines. Evidently there {127} is in addition to the geographical line some fundamental principle or fact which separates the two countries.
The same profound national convulsion which gave birth to the United States gave birth to the real life of Canada as well. As much principle and as much self-sacrifice were involved in the act of the Loyalists who gave to British Canada its peculiar character as in the struggles of the Revolutionists who founded the American Union. For what he believed a great principle, the Revolutionist broke down an old loyalty, cut his ties with the past, and engaged in the battle for independence. The Loyalist, on the other hand, with an abiding faith in the institutions of his mother-land, not to be shaken by the single mistake of a king, a minister, or a parliament, elected to stand by the losing side, to depend upon constitutional agitation to secure the full political liberty he too desired, and so sacrificed his all to retain his connection with the past, and came to Canada. No victory that Britain ever won by land or sea is more worthy to be blazoned on the pages' of her history than the loyal devotion of that great body of men and women, who, refusing to abjure their ancient allegiance, after the Revolutionary war, gave up their homes, their professions, and all that made life comfortable, crossed over into what was then a forest wilderness, and built up those Canadian provinces which have since grown into a great British confederation.
{128}
Who will venture to say that the faith of the Loyalist has not been as fully justified as that of the Revolutionist? American institutions have not developed any higher forms of political or religious freedom than those which are found in Canada and in other colonies of the Empire today under British institutions. They have not produced a higher tone of public morals or a greater purity of social life. They have not even diminished the risk of great national convulsion. They have not made impossible the oppression or abuse of inferior races, black, red, or yellow. They have not rendered statesmanship more noble and unselfish, justice more incorruptible, human life more sacred, domestic ties more holy, the people more God-fearing. I do not believe that there is a Canadian from one end of the Dominion to the other who honestly believes that American institutions have equalled, much less surpassed, his own in anyone of these particulars. If these are the things which ennoble a nation—if these are marks of true success—the descendants of the Loyalists have no reason to regret the choice which their ancestors made at the time of the Revolutionary war.
The strain under which that choice was made, and the courageous loyalty which inspired it, have never had the recognition throughout the Empire which they deserved. One English historian, however, has done justice to the United Empire Loyalists. Mr. Lecky says: 'There were brave and honest men {129} in America; who were proud of the great and free Empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude all the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the Crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence, and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was, at least, as worthy as that for which Washington had fought.'
That ideal was the conception of a United Empire.