It is, I think, a fatal flaw in Mr. Smith's discussion of the Canadian Question, a fatal comment on his claim to have 'done his best to take his readers to the heart of it by setting the whole case before them,' that he makes no mention of this decisive change in national policy, or of the consequent change in the Canadian mind, which, if not reconciled to losses in the past, has no reason to dread them in the future, and in this confidence is content. That he should treat as present and gravely irritating, grievances which have become purely historical, is unfair and misleading.
If the difficulties with the United States which have arisen on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are not settled amicably and justly, it will not be from any want of willingness on the part of British people or Canadians. Britain and Canada agreed to a settlement of the St Lawrence Fishery Question which an American Democratic President and Cabinet accepted as fair. A Republican Senate rejected it as a move in the party {185} game, and has preferred to leave it open ever since. Any reader of the correspondence in the Behring Sea Question can judge for himself on which side was the spirit of conciliation and compromise. Only in the last resort did Lord Salisbury utter the warning words which seem to have done more than anything else to prepare the way for fair adjudication upon the points at issue.
How curiously and completely Mr. Smith is out of touch and sympathy with the organizing movements of the British world: how oddly inconsistent he can be even while pressing his own theories, one or two further illustrations will suffice to show. Apparently he looks upon Australian Federation as a step in the wrong direction. 'We cannot help once more warning the Australians that Federation under the Elective system involves not merely the union of the several states under a central government with powers superior to them all; but the creation of Federal parties with all the faction, demagogism, and corruption which party conflicts involve over a new field and on a vastly extended scale. It is surprising how little this obvious and momentous consideration appears to be present to the minds of statesmen when the question of Federation is discussed[4].' Warnings like this are repeated. Anxious as he seems to be for the unification of the American continent by the absorption of Canada into the United States, Mr. Smith would apparently urge Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland to avoid even the example of Canadian {186} confederation in gaining for themselves effective unity, although he knows, that for them confederation means the freedom of the continental market and the same breaking down of tariff walls which is the one supreme bribe he has to offer to Canadians in exchange for the surrender of their nationality. Another turn of the intellectual wheel and even American unification is forgotten in a new ideal of disintegration. 'There is no reason why Ontario should not be a nation if she were minded to be one. Her territory is compact. Her population is already as large as that of Denmark, and likely to be a good deal larger, probably as large as that of Switzerland; and it is sufficiently homogeneous if she can only repress French encroachment on her eastern border. She would have no access to the sea: no more has Switzerland, Hungary, or Servia … The same thing might have been said with regard to the maritime Provinces—supposing them to have formed a legislative union—Quebec, British Columbia, or the North West. In the North West, rating its cultivable area at the lowest, there would be room for no mean nation.' This passage may explain to English or Australian readers why Mr. Smith has no acceptance in the Dominion as the prophet of Canada's political future. One remembers with astonishment that it is the writer of these lines who, on the one hand, assures Canadians that they cannot resist absorption into the United States, and who, on the other, tells the advocates of British unity that they are impracticable dreamers.
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After this it does not seem surprising to find that Mr. Smith himself proceeds to knock away the foundations on which his own argument on the Canadian question has been built? These foundations are practically two in number—the fear of war on the American continent arising from irritation at the presence of Britain there—and the necessity for Canada of commercial intercourse with her own continent. These are the reasons why the Empire is to be disintegrated, and Canada is to seek a new national connection.
Following upon this we read: 'Of conquest there is absolutely no thought. The Southern violence and the Western lawlessness which forced the Union into the war of 1812 are things of the past. The American people could not now be brought to invade the homes of an unoffending neighbour. They have no craving for more territory. They know that while a despot who annexes may govern through a viceroy with a strong hand, a republic which annexes must incorporate, and would only weaken itself by incorporating disaffection. The special reason for wishing to bring Canada at once into the Union, that she might help to balance the Slave Power, has with the Slave Power departed. So far as the Americans are concerned, Canada is absolute mistress of her own destiny.'
Canada, therefore, in Mr. Smith's later opinion, has nothing to fear from war with the United States.
Once more, discussing the McKinley tariff, we read:—,
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'However, the manifest faults of the measure, combined with the enormous waste of public money incurred in baling out surplus revenue to avert a reform of the tariff, have proved too much for the superstition or the sufferance of the American people. Symptoms of a change of opinion had even before appeared. New England is now praying for free admission of raw materials. The Republican party in the United States is the war party, kept on foot for the sake of maintaining the war tariff in the interest of the protected manufactures. It has made a desperate effort to retain power and to rivet its policy on the nation by means which have estranged from it the best of its supporters; but in the late elections it has received a signal, and probably decisive overthrow. What all the preachings of economic science were powerless to effect has been brought about at last by the reduction of the public debt, and of the necessity for duties as revenue. A new commercial era has apparently dawned for the United States, and the lead of the United States will be followed in time by the rest of the world.'