On the other hand, we see, in some parts of our own country, whole communities of people engaged in mechanical industries, while the earth calls for tillage. Even in our more populous territories, enough of what should be fruitful lands to yield subsistence to a larger population than Canada will ever contain, lies fallow and neglected. But our commercial relations are adverse to the proper adjustment of industrial pursuits.
The Canadians dare not rely upon their neighbors for bread to eat, any more than those neighbors would venture to build their workshops and factories in Canada. The more venturesome try to obviate the difficulty, to some extent, by illicit trade; but all the obstacles to legitimate commerce—to the conveniences of living—remain; and they must remain as long as the American and Canadian producers have to pay tribute to Cæsar on exchanging the fruits of their labors. Reciprocity treaties may modify, but they cannot remove, this great obstacle to prosperous trade.
Treaties regulating trade cannot so change the industries of the two countries as to confine large agricultural enterprises to the soil and climate that would insure success, nor send the artisan, now living on rich uncultivated lands, to till the earth. What means the extraordinary emigration from Canada to the States? And how can we account for the sudden expansion of manufacturing industries in Montreal and other Canadian towns? It means that, while governments are discussing treaties for reciprocal trade, their people are practising reciprocal emigration—but with a difference. The Canadian becomes an American citizen—the American very rarely a British subject. We recollect two incidents in our own experience apropos to the matter under consideration.
Some two years ago we passed a summer in the "Lower Provinces." In the parlor of our hotel, we fell into conversation with an intelligent man of business who proved to be a commercial traveller from Canada. His specialty was boots and shoes. On mentioning that Lynn, in Massachusetts, was the great shoe factory of "the States," his reply was, "Yes! the head of our firm is from Lynn." Lynn had gone to Montreal to employ Canadian hands in turning Canadian leather into boots and shoes to supply colonial markets. "The head of our firm," like other heads of firms, had solved the problem of appropriate industry as far as he was concerned. He had learned where material, and hands to work it, were cheapest, and he was utilizing them. He had emigrated to employ the cheap labor that could not emigrate. At another time, we met a well-dressed mechanic who was not at home. His home was in "the States." He was only visiting his birthplace and kindred. In reply to the remark that the high wages which had enticed him to the States were only high in sound, since greenbacks were at a great discount, and food, clothing, and rent at inflated prices, his reply evinced a perfect understanding of the whole question, as it affected him and the class to which he belonged.
"True," said he, "I am paid in greenbacks; but I have a better house, better food, and better clothes than I ever had before. And at the end of the year, my surplus greenbacks are worth more, in gold, than I could get for a year's labor in this colony."
Here are two parties whose interests are reciprocal, whose social conditions are essentially the same, who live in juxtaposition to each other, but with broad ocean between them and other countries and peoples, frittering away material interests, wasting revenues that of right should be employed for their advancement in social life, to gratify a spirit of antagonism where even rivalry should be deemed insane. But is there no remedy for these disorders in our political economy? We think there is a very obvious one; and if we may not say, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder," because the parties are not agreed, we can and do say, the sooner they are agreed, the better for both. We would say to Canada, do not waste your time and strength in trying to effect impossibilities. Let us see your many rivers alive with the artisans who can send to the market something else than ship-timber and deals. Let us see the smoke of the forge and the foundry rise in proximity to your mines of coal. We want all that you can make, and have no fear that you will in any degree impair the prosperity of our own industrial people. And we will pay you in bread, better and cheaper than you can get from your colder and less fruitful lands. And when your coarser materials are wrought into shape for export, we have skilled labor, nearer than Britain, to receive your surplus products and fashion them into the thousand fabrics which only skilled labor can supply.
We have no desire to see your wheat-fields fail or to decry their products in the market. We only say that they are too limited for dangerous competition with ours. And we further say, that if you will but develop other and more legitimate industries, so that your wheat-growing districts cannot feed your people, we will be sure to have bread enough and to spare. And you may be also sure that all your efforts will not so overstock the markets we can offer as to make trade languish, when the thousands now peopling this continent shall become millions, though the Old World should want nothing that you can give. And, then, you have but a doubtful road to the markets of the Old World. For half the year your highway to the ocean and to other lands must be across our territory. Intercolonial railways through unsettled and unproductive countries will not answer the demands of commerce. They will not pay; and, if they would, the interests served ought not to be so burdened where access may be had to readier and cheaper lines of communication.
Does all this imply annexation? Call it what you will. As one of your Canadian statesmen said to the people of a lesser province, "If you do not want us to annex you, we are willing that you should annex us." If you are more conservative than we are, a little conservatism will do us no harm; and the interests you would conserve would be quite as safe under the eagle's beak as under the lion's paw. If one be a bird, the other is surely a beast of prey; and we believe that harmless folk have less to apprehend from one alone than from the jealous rivalries of both.
Of one thing we feel assured: the time is not far distant when the people of this northern half of America will have to adopt a policy so distinct from that of the older nations of Europe that self-preservation will demand a union of power where there is now an evident identity of interests.
It were well that this union should be preceded by such guarantees of existing rights and privileges as might, without specific and just conventions, be open to subsequent question and dispute. And it were also well for governments to direct the march which necessity compels their people to make, rather than incur the risk of finding themselves at variance with those for whose greater good civil government is designed. We do not purpose to discuss the origin or foundation of civil government. It is enough for us to know that man requires and God wills it; and that, in the absence of other and higher sanctions, the best evidence of his will is found in the intelligent, honest consent of the governed. Does any one doubt what the more intelligent and honest people of Canada and the United States require? We do not ask what may be the rôle of the political adventurer, the office-seeker, the government speculator or tuft-hunter. We always know that the end of all their loyalty or patriotism is self. But we ask what is needed for the greater good of the people. Not alone the people of to-day or to-morrow, but of the future as well. How the people of to-day esteem the policy of their lawgivers, may be known by their conduct under it. And the army of government revenue officers and detectives on either side along the frontiers of Canada and "the States" offers sufficient evidence of the esteem in which the laws of trade are held. We know not which is the more corrupt—the law-breakers or the agents of the law; but we do know, from the notoriety of the fact, that the commercial relations now existing between the Canadas and the States are, in effect, so demoralizing, to commercial people and commercial interests, that the laws which propose to govern them were better abrogated than left to offer a premium to chicanery and fraud.