Canada and Canadian affairs have, however, succeeded in interesting the public of America and the public of Europe—the "go-ahead" English reader in the New World—because Canada would be a very desirable addition to the already overgrown Republic founded by the Pilgrim Fathers and Europeans; because French interest looks with a somewhat wistful eye to the race which at one time peopled and governed so large a portion of the Columbian continent. Regrets, mingling with desires, are powerful stimulants. An unconquerable and natural jealousy exists in France that England should have succeeded in laying the foundations of an empire, which bids fair to perpetuate the glories of the Anglo-Saxon race in its Transatlantic dominion; whilst the true Briton, on the other hand, regards Canada as the apple of his eye, and sees with pleasure and with pride that his beloved country, forewarned by the grand error committed at Boston, and so prophetically denounced by Chatham, has obtained a fairer and more fertile field for British legitimate ambition.
Tocqueville, a sensible and somewhat impartial writer, is the only political foreign reasoner who has done justice to Canada; but it is par parenthèse only; and even his powers of mind and of reasoning, nurtured as they have been in republicanism, fail to convince fearless hearts that democracy is a human necessity.
That the American nation will endeavour to put a wet blanket over the nascent fires of Spanish ambition in the miserable new States of the Northern Continent, and to absorb them in the stars of Columbia, there can be no doubt. California, the most distant of the old American settlements of Spain, has felt already the bald eagle's claw; Texas is annexed; and unless European interests prevent it, which they must do, Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatan, and all the petty priest-ridden republics of the Isthmus, must follow, and that too very soon.
But what do the people of the United States, (for the government is not a particeps, save by force,) pretend to effect by their enormous sovereignty? The control probably of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards is the grand object, and, to effect this, Canada and Nova Scotia stand in the way, and Canada and Nova Scotia are therefore marked down as other Stars in the American galaxy.
The Russian empire is cited, as a case in point, for immense extension being no obstacle to central coercion, or government, if the term be more pleasing.
We forget that each individual State of the present Union repudiates centralization, and acts independently. Little Maine wanted to go to war with mighty England on its own bottom; and there was a rebellion in Lesser Rhode Island, which puzzled all the diplomatists very considerably. Now let us sketch a military picture, and bring out the lights and shades boldly.
Suppose that the United States determines upon a war with Great Britain, let us look to the consequences. Firstly, an immense re-action has taken place in Canada, and a mass of growlers, who two years ago would perhaps have been neutral, would readily take arms now in favour of British institutions, simply because "impartiality" has been evinced in governing them.
Next, the French Canadians have no idea of surrendering their homes, their laws, their language, their altars, to the restless and destructive people whose motto is "Liberty!" but whose mind is "Submission," without reservation of creed or colour.
Then, on the boundless West, innumerable Indians, disgusted by the unceremonious manner in which the Big Knife has driven them out, are ready, at the call of another Tecumseh, to hoist the red-cross flag.
In the South, the negro, already taught very carefully by the North a lesson of emancipation, only waits the hour to commence a servile and horrible war, worse than that exercised by the poor Cherokees and Creeks in Florida, which, miserable as were the numbers, scanty the resources, and indomitable the courage, defied the united means and skill of the American armies to quell.