In regard to choice of subject-matter, while trying to satisfy the natural demand for certain "stock" documents of vital importance, we hope to introduce much fresh and novel matter. It is our intention that the majority of the extracts should be lively in style—that is, personal, or descriptive, or rhetorical, or even strongly partisan—and should not so much profess to give the truth as supply data for inference. We aim at the greatest possible variety, and lay under contribution letters, biographies, ballads and poems, diaries, debates, and newspaper accounts. Economics, London, municipal, and social life generally, and local history, are represented in these pages.
The order of the extracts is strictly chronological, each being numbered, titled, and dated, and its authority given. The text is modernised, where necessary, to the extent of leaving no difficulties in reading.
We shall be most grateful to teachers and students who may send us suggestions for improvement.
S. E. Winbolt.
Kenneth Bell.
NOTE TO THIS VOLUME
For liberty to reproduce the more recent of the extracts here quoted, I have to acknowledge the kindness of Miss E. Pauline Johnson of Vancouver (No. 52); of Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts (No. 57); of Mr. F. A. Talbot and Messrs. Seeley, Service & Co., author and publishers of The Making of a Great Canadian Railway (No. 55); and of Messrs. Constable & Co., the publishers of the late Lord Wolseley's Story of a Soldier's Life (No. 48). To several of the sources quoted I was directed by the volume of selections published in 1907 under the title Canadian Constitutional Development, by Professor H. E. Egerton of Oxford and Professor W. L. Grant of Kingston, Ontario, both of whom have also made other helpful suggestions, as has Mr. H. P. Biggar, the representative of the Canadian Archives Office in this country. Finally, the task of finding what one wanted has been very greatly facilitated by the sympathetic aid of Mr. P. E. Lewin, who never loses a chance of making the superb collection over which he presides in the Library of the Royal Colonial Institute useful to anyone who may be interested in the Britains overseas.
J. M.