ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE CANADIAN CLUB
OF MONTREAL
MONTREAL.
SEASON 1911-1912
A\X
y
ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BEFORE
THE CANADIAN CLUB
OF MONTREAL
MONTREAL.
.
0
SEASON 1911-1912
F
CONTENTS
PREFACE 5-6
OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 7
WINTER NAVIGATION IN THE ST. LAWRENCE, Prof. Howard
T. Barnes 9
ONE OF MONTREAL'S GREATEST ASSETS, Rev. Jas. Barclay,
D.D., L.L.D 15
INDIAN LEGISLATION, Sir Andrew Fraser (late Lt.-Governor,
Bengal) 23
THE EAST AND THE WEST, J. A. M. Aikins, K.C. (M.P. for
Brandon) 29
COLONIAL RESPONSIBILITIES, C. H. Cahan, K.C 37
SUPREME COURT OF THE WORLD, Hon. H. B. F. Macfarland 5 I NORTHERN RHODESIA, THE EVOLUTION OF A DEPENDENCY,
W. L. Hichens 57
THE POSITION OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN CANADA,
Armand Lavergne 65
DEVELOPMENT OF THE POSTAL SERVICE IN CANADA, Hon.
Rodolphe Lemieux 75
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF CANADA, Hon. Justice
Riddell 85
ENGLAND AND GERMANY, Professor Horning 109
SOME CANADIAN ASSETS AND LIABILITIES, Sir Byron
Edmund Walker 119
Two DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF INDEPENDENCE, J. S.
Ewart, K.C 125
BRITISH RULE IN INDIA, Alex. Fraser 153
SIBERIA, J. Mackintosh Bell, Ph.D., F.R.G.S 165
CANADA'S OPPORTUNITY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION, R. Tait
Mackenzie 175
THE CONSTITUTION OF JAPAN, Consul Nakamura 177
SOCIAL CO-OPERATION IN A GREAT CITY, F. H. McLean. . . 185
CANADA FROM EAST TO WEST, R. B. Bennett, M.P 189
TAXATION, Hon. Lawson Purdy 205
PIONEERS' VOYAGES TO THE NORTHWEST, Senator Boyer... 219
TRANSPORTATION, Hon. Geo. P. Graham 231
DOWN EAST, Principal Mackenzie, Dalhousie College,
Halifax 243
CANADA AND IMPERIAL DEFENCE; THE DUTY OF THE HOUR,
John Williamson, M.A 25 \
3
PREFACE
IT has come to be recognized in this age of meetings, that use can be made of the lunch hour for other good than the physical. Indeed it is a good time for meetings, for the busiest of men must eat, and most men like a sociable meal. In this friendly atmosphere the members of the Canadian Club have listened, with the ready sympathy that comes after even an indifferent lunch taken in good company, to a succession of speakers of the most wide and varied interest. Now in its seventh session, the Club has decided to issue in book form the speeches of its guests.
It is interesting to recall here the early history of the Club. The first of the Canadian Clubs was founded at Hamilton in 1893. The Toronto Club, founded shortly afterwards, introduced the present custom of meeting at luncheon.
The Canadian National League, begun in Montreal just before the Hamilton Club, was of about the same nature but does not appear to have directly influenced the present organiza- tion. A small Canadian Club, however, which met during the winter of 1904 at the Y.M.C.A., under the Presidency of its founder, Mr. E. Edwin Howard, was one of the elements in the development of the larger Montreal Society.
On Monday, the i6th of October, 1905, Messrs. John A. Gunn and W. H. D. Miller, both former members of the Toronto Club, called a meeting at Freeman's Restaurant, consisting of themselves and George Lyman, Andrew McMaster and E. H. Cooper, to discuss the advisability of establishing a Canadian Club in Montreal on the lines of that in Toronto. Its forma- tion was then and there decided upon and Mr. Lyman was made Secretary pro tern. In consequence, the same gentlemen, with Messrs. E. Edwin Howard, Pierre Beullac, H. C. Monk, and A. Huntly Duff, Mr. Cooper only being absent, met on Thursday, October I9th, 1909, at Freeman's and founded "The Canadian Club of Montreal."
The first officers were: — President, A. R. McMaster; Vice- Presidents, Pierre Beullac and W. H. D. Miller; Treasurer, John A. Gunn; Secretary, George Lyman; Literary Correspond- ent, A. Huntly Duff. Executive Committee: — The officers and Messrs. E. E. Howard, H. C. Monk, E. H. Cooper and H. Baby.
The first meeting was held on Monday, October 3Oth, at the St. Lawrence Hall, at which no men were present and en- rolled themselves as members of the Club. Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, the English author and humorist, was the guest of the Club on this occasion.
The Club has increased greatly since then; and the con- viction has grown, not here only but throughout the Dominion, that such meetings offer valuable opportunity for the formation of public opinion. The speakers vary as greatly in matter as in manner, but they all have one thing in common, namely, a belief that they have something of importance to say to an audience that is worth addressing.
With the exception of some distinguished foreigner, the guests of the Club usually take for their theme some aspect of national or Imperial welfare. They differ in their definition of the Im- perial connection and the national aspiration; but this is right enough, for the future of a free and growing country is not to be bound by the formula of any politician. It is worked out through diversity of opinion by unity of spirit. And both these are clearly expressed in the following pages.
J. A. DALE,
Literary Correspondent.
G. T. BELL R. L. H. EWING PROF. J. A. DALE
OFFICERS
C. P. BEAUBIEN, K.C.
GEORGE LYMAN GEORGE C. MCDONALD PERCIVAL MOLSON
OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE CANADIAN CLUB OF MONTREAL
President Fice- Presidents Hon. -Secretary Hon. -Treasurer Literary-Correspondent Assist. Sec. -Treasurer
OFFICERS
- GEORGE LYMAN
- G. T. BELL, C. P. BEAUBIEN, K.C.
- R. L. H. EWING, E. T. Bank Bldg.
- PERCIVAL MOLSON
- PROF. J. A. DALE
- GEORGE C. MCDONALD, 179 St.
James St.
COMMITTEE
JOHN BAILLIE A. N. BRODEUR A. R. DOBLE GRAHAM DRINKWATER
A. FALCONER, K.C. A. F. C. Ross W. G. M. SHEPHERD THEO. H: WARDLE WORTH
JAS. S. BRIERLY, Past Pres.
PAST PRESIDENTS
1905 - - A. R. MCMASTER, K.C.
1906 - - PIERRE BEULLAC
1907 - - W. H. D. MILLER
1908 - - E. EDWIN HOWARD
1909 - - E. FABRE SURVEYER, K.C.
1910 - - JAS. S. BRIERLEY
[ November ist, 1911 ]
WINTER NAVIGATION IN THE ST. LAWRENCE
By HOWARD T. BARNES, F.R.S.
Professor of Physics in McGill University
NOWHERE can we find a more interesting example of the delicate poising of the forces of Nature than on the St. Lawrence. Here is a great body of water trying all winter to keep its surface clear, and trying to resist the action of the dead water. The ice begins to form about the middle of this month in inlets and bays and in the lee of islands, with small formations of surface ice gradually extending and occasionally cut down by the sun or wind. But by the beginning of December the permanent ice sets in in the still waters, and with such a season as we had last winter the ice will remain until spring.
The method of freezing is quite simple. The river itself, flowing swiftly in the main channel, carries the ice from far down to tide water and the sea, and if it were not for the many narrow places in the river probably the whole river would never freeze. But there are wide spaces such as Lakes St. Peter, St. Francis and St. Louis, where the ice accumulates in bays and inlets and is blown out by the winds in great sheets, which are carried down by the current, and often jammed in the narrow parts where the current is swiftest. The formation of these jams makes the first ice bridge, the basis on which the ice is formed back against the current.
At Lake St. Peter and Lake St. Francis the ice often catches in the narrow waters, and the ice goes back over the lake to Sorel, through the islands and up to Montreal, this process taking about three weeks in an average winter. At Lake
9
Winter Navigation in the St. Lawrence
St. Louis the conditions are different because the current is very swift at the lower end. The ice moves out at the lower end and sweeps in a great circle up to Cornwall, and is held by He Perrot. In Lake St. Francis there is first the ice from Valleyfield Bay, then the ice from the inshore shallows until half the lower end has taken, and then the whole lake is soon frozen.
However there are many open spots in the river where surface ice never forms, and in these we have a different kind of ice produced. There are several conspicuous open places, the Lachine Rapids and the space above them to the island, the Cascade Rapids extending up to the foot of Lake St. Francis and then from Cornwall to Prescott, 40 miles of main channel which is always open.
In these portions there is produced frazzle ice in immense quantities, a fine light ice, the result of water being agitated and mixed with air. These fine crystals may seem of little account, but wherever water containing them runs under the surface ice such as at Laprairie Basin, Lake St. Louis, and at Cornwall from the Long Sault Rapids, these crystals accumulate and become attached to the under side of the surface ice, and build immense hanging dams which are impervious to the flow of the river and hold it back, the outward manifestation being a rise in the water level. At all such points there is a great fluctuation in the water level which often produces considerable shore flooding, and is in fact the only way in which the St. Lawrence ever causes any anxiety from floods. The St. Lawrence is wonderfully uniform in its flow, and it is only in winter and spring when ice jams form that it ever floods its banks.
There is another form of ice which is called anchor ice, being anchored to the bottom; and wherever the surface is unprotected by ice the anchor ice grows on the bottom, just as the weeds do in summer, sometimes attaining several feet in thickness, growing luxuriantly during the night and dying during the day when the sun strikes it. Then this anchor ice rises under the influence of the sun and is carried down with the frazil ice until it strikes a jam and helps to block the current. At times ice islands are formed from anchor ice which spreads out and forms a pseudo layer of surface ice.
10
Winter Navigation in the St. Lawrence
The character of the ice below Montreal is very uniform. As soon as winter sets in you find an almost complete ice covering. There are air holes and places in swift currents where the river does not freeze, but they are of minor importance. Through Lake St. Peter the ice varies in thickness. Then down at Cap Rouge we have the ice bridge formed; that is, until the past two years, when the government has worked to keep this bridge from forming.
The character of the ice above Montreal is quite different. Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis have the greater proportion of the total surface — 218 square miles, between He Perrot and Prescott and 68 square miles in Lake St. Louis, while the portion outside the lakes is very small in area.
The character of the floods on the St. Lawrence is well known to many of us, occasioned by damming of the water channel by ice. As early as 1885 the Montreal Flood Commis- sion was appointed — and I am glad to see an honored member of that Commission, Mr. John Kennedy, here to-day. This Flood Commission reported that the only solution for the flood difficulty was to keep an open channel so as to pass the ice out as quickly as possible to the sea, where it disappears. But it was not until three years ago that any serious effort was made to do this by the use of ice breakers. The Flood Com- mission recommended ice breakers and quoted the example of our American neighbors, where in many places they were used with success. Three years ago a start was made, after much opposition, which resulted in the Montcalm being prevented from going to work until the ice bridge at Cap Rouge had taken. This is the narrow passage above Quebec, and is the keystone of the whole position, the bridge there holding the ice back clear up to Montreal. Many times in the spring when the ice above had shoved and was ready to pass out, this ice bridge at Cap Rouge had held it back and so stopped navigation. So the government considered that if they could keep this part open they would get the channel open earlier. After the ice at Cap Rouge had formed, the Montcalm started to cut away the bridge, but it was too late, and the bridge grew faster than they could cut it away; and it was not until April that they had cut a channel up to Lake St. Peter.
11
Winter Navigation in the St. Lawrence
Two years ago the Marine Department put two boats on the work at Quebec, the Lady Grey and the Montcalm, and they were started early enough to get to work as soon as there was the first sign of an ice bridge. The story of their work is very interesting and we find that at no time was there any difficulty in keeping the ice out of that gorge. The bridge there sometimes forms 80 feet thick, yet those two boats, by working once a day for an afternoon or morning sail, were sufficient to keep the ice out altogether. The effect of that upon the water was to allow the tides full sway on the upper parts of the river, as was years before anticipated by the engineers of the Flood Commission. The effect of preventing the formation of the Cap Rouge ice bridge was sufficient to keep the channel clear right up to Three Rivers. That was a great step in advance, and at no time were the ice breakers severely taxed.
Last winter, the severest we have had for a long time, the two boats were at Quebec, as before, trying to keep the Cap Rouge channel open, and they had no difficulty whatever. But at one time during the winter it was telegraphed that at Portneuf, higher up, an ice bridge had formed, due to some tidal changes, and that the bridge had taken across. It was just a little surface formation, and if the boat could have gone up at once and steamed through that ice bridge and back, which would have taken only part of a day, it would have been cleared away without trouble. But on account of some difficulty in getting the boats back, a week elapsed before the boats arrived, and when they got there the ice was 25 feet thick and had run up the river 20 miles. So instead of an easy day's trip they had this tremendous barrier which had grown up in a week. That is a splendid example of what preventive measures mean. Merely keep the surface clear as the ice forms and the current will carry the blocks away and we shall have no more trouble. But there are many parts of the river where no work is done in winter.
I believe it is the duty of our government to further this work and to push enterprise in this direction. Even if they are not quite convinced that it is possible to keep a clear channel between Quebec and Montreal they should at least experiment. They are doing a good deal as it is, and if the weight of public opinion were strong enough I think they would do more. And
12
Winter Navigation in the St. Lawrence
I feel that we should make every effort to see what the possi- bilities are. I believe in pushing every work to its utmost extremity. The result might be a failure, but the prospects at present are very bright. The more we study this question of ice breaking and the struggle of the river to free itself from ice, and other physical facts tending to prevent ice formation, the more one is drawn to the conclusion that every little effort made to assist the river will be rewarded a hundredfold. If for no other purpose than the prevention of floods it is worth while having an open channel between Montreal and Quebec. And I am sure Mr. Cowie will endorse me when I say that the benefit derived from keeping an open channel between Quebec and Montreal in securing an earlier opening of navigation for Montreal will be very great.
Then there is another aspect which perhaps you have not considered. That is that the ice bridge below St. Mary's Current, where the frazzle becomes very thick, holds a great deal of Montreal's sewage up all winter. Montreal is discharging enormous amounts of sewage into the river. It ought to provide for it some other way in order to preserve the river from pol- lution. But as it is not doing that we shall not be very glad to think that just below us every winter nearly all of this sewage is held up by the ice.
Then as to navigation, perhaps many of my shipping friends will not agree with me. But the more I study this matter the more I am led to believe that an expenditure on the channel much less than that proposed for the construction of the Geor- gian Bay Canal and the Hudson Bay route, spent on securing ice breakers of the powerful Russian Yermak type, would keep our river open the whole winter. And I have not arrived at that conclusion from a merely theoretical basis. For many years I have been down on the river studying its conditions. I have spent many weeks every winter measuring the tempera- ture of the water and examining the way the ice goes — it is a recreation to me to get down there and feel that I am at the same time accomplishing some good.
Our scientific study of the river during the past 3 years has put the whole matter in a new light, and I have revised many of my ideas regarding ice production. One of these is the immense influence of the sun. It exercises an enormous in-
13
Winter Navigation in the St. Lawrence
fluence even on the coldest days of winter. When the sun is shining the water is never at freezing point, and the effect of the sun is such as to disintegrate the ice early in the season. In early February the surface ice begins to grow less, and after that the ice production begins to grow less all through the river and the surface ice becomes thinner.
I might speak of many things on the upper part of the river, such as the effects of damming the river, but these are controversial points, and perhaps had better be left alone. One thing I would like to do, and that is to point out to you the immense value of the ice on Lake St. Francis. There we have 91 square miles of the most beautiful ice, 24 inches thick of pure hard frozen water, a practically unbroken surface of ice. Take this and calculate its commercial value at present rates. You will find it is worth about $500,000,000. There is enough ice there alone to give every man, woman and child in Montreal, with a population of 600,000, a hundred pieces of ice a day during the four summer months. Yet why is it that last summer there was a shortage of ice and we had to import it? That is a disgrace to this city. We need cheaper ice in this city, and we have it right at our doors. What city in the world has such a splendid supply as we have, and why is it not harvested in sufficient quantities? Why does not the city take the matter up and see that the poor have cheaper ice? It is easy for the wealthy. But those of you who stay in the city for the summer, particularly this last one, know the suffer- ing there is whenever the thermometer gets up towards the 100 degree mark with no wind and no way out, day after day. The one thing that brings relief to this suffering is ice, in great quantities. And so as I close my talk I want to make one plea for the establishment of a Commission to see that there shall be no shortage of ice for Montreal another season.
Prof. Barnes closed his address with a very interesting exhibition of slides showing the work of ice breakers in Canada and other countries.
14
[ November ijth, 1911 ]
ONE OF MONTREAL'S GREATEST ASSETS
By REV. JAMES BARCLAY, D.D., LL.D.
A MORE correct title for my remarks would be, "An appeal for one of Montreal's greatest assets, McGill University." Of all the many magnificent institutions this city posses- ses, I do not know of any more deserving of honor and support. Montreal has good reason to be proud of McGill. Long before I came here or knew anything about Montreal I knew about McGill, and knew that that college had made its name and fame throughout the Old Country and Europe, especially in her medical school. We may be proud of its beginning, of the men who founded it and the men who maintained it and advanced it. And we may justly be proud of the principals who have presided over it, of Sir William Dawson, whose valuable services to the educational welfare of this city your school commissioners have tried to recognize by giving its best elementary school his name. We may be proud of Principal Peterson, whose worth I do not think has yet been properly appreciated in Montreal. We have in Principal Peterson a man of remarkable business ability, of singular administrative capacity and a wonderful mastery of details, while at the same time a man of rare scholarship — I will venture to say the finest classical scholar on the continent of America: and we all know that his scholarship is by no means confined to the classics. We may be proud of the professors who have filled and adorned its chairs, of its long roll of successful students who have brought credit to themselves and glory to their Alma Mater: who have gone from its class rooms to gain high distinction in other uni-
15
One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
versities, and occupy important positions in every quarter of the world and every department of its life.
Montreal, I think, has hitherto somewhat failed to realize what an important, indeed essential factor the University is in its own life. Montreal has failed to see how closely and indissolubly the interests of the University and the city are bound together. No country to-day can make great strides in progress or prosperity that starves its education. The foremost nations of the world to-day are those which have taken the greatest interest and given the greatest support and encourage- ment to their schools and colleges.
For a time the idea was prevalent, and I believe it is still entertained in some minds, that most of the education given in a university was useless and waste — that the natural educa- tion of value was that leading to immediate, practical, material results. I can only say, let us here be profoundly thankful that this base conception never succeeded in mastering the minds of our forefathers, or what an infinitely inferior world we should inherit to-day. Of course "practical" education is valuable and in the past perhaps it has not had a sufficient amount of time and interest attached to it. But to my mind of far greater value is that education which enlarges the mind, refines the taste, deepens and widens the sympathies, awakens the thirst for knowledge, kindles the imagination to lofty ideals and stirs the heart to generous feelings. Montreal can profit- ably take a lot of that kind of education — and McGill can supply it.
More closely than many have perhaps thought the university touches our life. In every phase of life, at every point. It enters into every field of thought and action to which the human mind or hand can address themselves. The university is the guide of the people in all fields of literature, art and science, and science both practical as well as theoretical. The very last thing a university stands for is exclusiveness. The university should be and is by its very name an institution of general service, not only within the scholastic walls but out in the business world. As Jefferson said, the function of a university is to form the statesmen and legislators, the judges upon whom public property and individual happiness so much depend, to harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture
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One of Montreal' 'j Greatest Assets
and manufacture and commerce, and by well informed views on political economy to give free scope to the public interest.
Not only the leaders in all our professions, — that is not only natural but inevitable, — but the ablest statesmen, the most illustrious diplomatists, the most brilliant speakers, the greatest discoverers and inventors, and not only these but the pioneers of industry and the princes of commerce, have issued from our universities and risen to their positions of eminence largely because of their training there.
" The university is the prophetic interpreter of the people," said a President of Harvard, " the prophet of its past and present and future in all its possibilities."
As with every institution, so with the university, there are two outstanding features, its work and its wants. And the university like every other institution — even a church — can only be successfully conducted upon a proper business basis. And it must have sufficient funds at its disposal for a needed and wise expenditure.
I need scarcely tell you that far more money is needed for McGill to-day, not only because it is so much larger; and I would like you to remember that there are permanent needs which are a result not of its failure but the result of its splendid success and growth. The teaching demanded to-day involves greatly increased equipment and expenditure. There was a time when professors and benches in a class room for the students were all that was necessary. But think of the depart- ment of physical science to-day with its laboratories and libraries, its expensive machinery and equipment. Yet no sane man — and I always look upon Montreal manufacturers and merchants as sane — would dream of the abolition or curtailment of this department. Well, gentlemen, you must take the thing up, and combine to maintain these things if you feel you need them. They are essential to the education of any city of ambition to take a front place, and by that I mean a front place not alone in learning and research, but a front place in industrial, mechanical and commercial enterprises. And what is true of the expenditure in the science department is true of all the others. New subjects are demanded; new chairs required; ample accommodation and increased facilities are essential. New languages must be taught, new subjects
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One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
introduced and the old ones subdivided. And this means that the staff must be greatly enlarged, and with every new depart- ment and every increase in accommodation and every additional equipment, the need for financial support grows.
There has been something like a revolution in recent years in university wok which demands a much larger expenditure of money. There has been a change in the professorships, in the chairs and the men who occupy them. They are no longer simple recluses who live a lonely ascetic life with few material wants — and a happy change it is both for the professors and the community. It does not mean that they are less intellectual or efficient, but that they are more human and more practical, that they live more in the actual world and move more amongst their fellow men, and the benefit is mutual. But this means that the miserable pittance which was formerly barely sufficient for the scholastic recluse is utterly inadequate now. I know there are people who cannot see what a professor can want with money, or why he should need a house. There are people who would relegate them to the original simplicity of the hermit life, the moss his bed, the ground his cell, his food the fruit, his drink the crystal well. But the professor to-day must live like other men and mingle in public life and take an active interest in it, and the more our McGill professors do this the better both for them and the city. But all this means augmented salaries. I know, you know, most of our professors are not covetous men, they have not the remotest dream of luxury, and most of them would be contented with a salary half that paid to the average baseball player. They never dream of such salaries as are paid the bank or insurance or railway manager, but they do wish, and who of us do not wish for them, that they should be able to do the hard and responsible work of teaching and pursuing the absolutely essential work of research without being harassed by carking care and anxiety as to how to find the necessities of life. The one condition for highest intellectual effort is repose of mind. No argument is needed for me to-day, the facts speak for themselves. Every department at McGill needs more money than was formerly required for the whole University. New chairs, new depart- ments must be added. And to this there is the cost of adminis- tration, the cost of caretaking, of maintenance and repairs.
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One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
Then there is outside work which every university worthy of a name must do, work of immense benefit to the community. The students demand it. Mere class room work and lectures are no longer sufficient for the student life. Many things are needed. We have a Union and other things, but many other things we must have — a convocation hall, a gymnasium, places of resi- dence.
McGill has been fortunate in finding noble friends who have given noble contributions. We know the palatial buildings and princely equipment. But you must remember that all or most of them have been given for special purposes, and the addition of each has served still more to emphasize the general poverty of the University, has made the ordinary income still more inadequate. And when the governing body would fain make a much needed improvement, a greatly needed addition to the efficiency of the staff, or increases in salary, they have been face to face with worse than an empty exchequer — a continually growing deficit.
We are profoundly thankful to those princely benefactors who have made McGill to-day what she is and enabled her to do what she has done. Their beneficence will bear golden fruit long after they have passed away. But the position of McGill to-day is little short of a reproach to the city of Montreal. There is no institution of the city in which you have more reason to take a just pride, and yet what have you done for it? You have shown your pride by allowing it to struggle year after year under sore financial strain and stress, by allowing able men whose names were a tower of strength and whose services were invaluable, to go elsewhere. When I think of Callender, Richardson and Rutherford and others who might be the pride of any university and city, lost because you would not keep them, my heart is sore.
I appeal to the merchants and manufacturers and profes- sional men of Montreal, not only to the magnates of commerce, but to all. The more widespread the sympathy and support given it the stronger will McGill be. Every man in the com- munity has his part to play and his burden to bear. Ruskin assigns to each of us his separate function in the State — the soldier to defend his country, the lawyer to secure justice, the doctor to heal, the pastor to teach, and it is the function of the
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One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
merchant to provide. And just as the main motive of the soldier is not his pay, just as the main motive of the lawyer or doctor is not his fee, and as the main motive of the true pastor is not his stipend, the main motive of the true manufacturer is not what he can gain for himself, but what he can provide for his city and his country.
You can if you choose make all the provision necessary for the success and maintenance of your University, and you can make no wiser investment — it will repay you even com- mercially. " The university, " Harper says, " from some points of view is a charitable institution, and does not hesitate to accept from every source gifts large or small to prosecute work for the public benefit which declares no dividends " — and there I differ from him. It does not declare dividends as you know them on the stock exchange. But it pays better and higher dividends, it is declaring splendid dividends — McGill has given back with rich interest everything it has received. I have no fear in saying that Montreal and Canada has no more valuable investment to-day than McGill University. I was told only yesterday, and by a Trinity man too, who was just back from a tour round the world, that everywhere he went he found McGill students occupying positions of importance and trust — McGill is beginning almost to rival Scotland in filling the big places of the world.
I have frequently compared and contrasted the two uni- versities I know best — the one in the Old Land where I had my student career and graduated, and the one in the New Land, which has honored me by placing my name on its roll. There are points of resemblance. One is in the commercial metropolis of Scotland, the other in the metropolis of Canada. There is another feature in which they resemble each other closely: they both need money. And in both cases it is their growth and success which has caused their need for money. They have both been fortunate in finding princely benefactors and been meagerly supplied with general endowment funds. So far they resemble each other, but in other ways they differ. Glasgow gets considerable help from the government, McGill unfor- tunately gets little. Glasgow has the city behind it. McGill so far has not had the city behind it. The merchants and manufacturers of Glasgow have taken a warm interest and
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One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
keen pride in their university and shown themselves generous friends. Their motto is " Let Glasgow nourish " and their prayer has been most abundantly answered, and the citizens have always acknowledged that by no means the least important factor in their prosperity is their university. They have seen and felt its influence, not only in literature and professional life, but in the vast industries and great enterprises of their city. They realize that in promoting the efficiency of their university they have done the very best possible thing they could do to promote the progress and prosperity of their city.
Glasgow has still a grateful memory of an instance in its early history of the steam engine. When James Watt came back to Glasgow from London in 1775 he was refused permission to set up in business in the Borough because he was neither a burgess nor an apprentice, nor the son of a burgess or an appren- tice. But the university authorities, with a far wider outlook, at once appointed him mathematical instrument maker to the university and gave him a room in the college building for his workshops, and it was there, the favorite resort of Adam Smith, that Watt evolved the idea of a separate condenser. Again and again it has been from the lips of professors and at the hands of universities that the practical man for the first time learnt the true meaning of his business and its latent possibilities. Glasgow never reaped richer interest from any investment than " The Wealth of Nations " and the steam engine, and both came from her university.
Hitherto Montreal has done almost nothing for McGill. I am not speaking of those great gifts of a few generous citizens to whom this city can never be sufficiently grateful. Yet since I came to Canada, McGill has been doing splendid things for Montreal both directly and indirectly. There is scarcely a problem in -the city?s development but you go to McGill for its solution. Whether it is beautifying the city, or problems of navigation, it is to McGill you turn.
And McGill has been doing something else. Not satisfied with training for citizenship in the higher walks of life through lectures and class rooms, it has been sending members of its staff and of its student classes into the slums to try and train the poorest and most ignorant of the people for better citizen-
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One of Montreal's Greatest Assets
ship — the University Settlement is doing magnificent work for Montreal.
I have not time to enumerate all the needs of McGill, but will say every one of its needs is deserving of a plea in my appeal. Educationally, we have great reason to be proud of McGill. Gentlemen, it lies with you to make us educationally proud of Montreal. I make this appeal in the confident hope and without the shadow of a fear that it will meet with a generous and worthy response. Should it fail, Montreal will cease to be to me what it has always been, a city whose generosity I have had abundant cause to believe in, and of which I have had very good occasion to boast.
22
[ November i?th, IQII ]
INDIAN LEGISLATION
By SIR ANDREW FRASER
Late Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Bengal
I PRO POSE to give you some impressions of India which have been formed in my own life of thirty-seven years of service for the Crown in that country. I do not propose to give any statistics or such information as you may get from blue-books, but rather to endeavor to convey to your minds a general impression about the life in India and the way India is administered. I suppose it is true of India as it is of no other country that the life of certain officers brings them into touch with every phase of life among the people of the country. There are certain branches of the service in India which are so closely in contact with the people that the officers see the life of the people in every particular. The impression which one gets after a long service in India is different from the impressions with which he enters upon that service, and perhaps different from the impressions of the man who only sees a little of India for a few days.
There is one thing which I should like to say very clearly about India first of all, a thing which is often said, but which it is very difficult fully to realize; that is, that India is not a country but many countries. The people of India are not one people but many peoples; there is no Indian nation, but there are many races inhabiting the different parts of India. When I tell you that India is as large as Europe without Russia, I do not make any great impression on the Canadian mind, for the size of Canada does not make that seem very great; but when I tell you that the population of India is as great as the population of Europe without Russia — over 300 millions — I may create a somewhat different impression.
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Indian Legislation
Among these multitudinous masses of people there are many races which differ from each other just as emphatically and fully as the races of Europe. When we take the Northern races of India and contrast them with the races of the South, we find we are contrasting people that differ as much between themselves at least as the Germans do from the Latin races in Europe. If we take the people of Baluchistan and compare them with any of the races in the interior, we have people differing from each other as much perhaps as the Turks do even from ourselves. We have also differences in religion, in history, in tradition, in education, and in everything that makes difference of race and separates the nations of Europe. Per- haps you say, " We have that in Canada." Well you have to a certain extent, but there is one thing you have not got; that is, the power that separates these things forever until that power is taken away — that is the power of caste. Caste has interfered to make these distinctions permanent, to strengthen and stereotype them forever. Until caste goes, there can be no real movement towards having an Indian nation, and there will be no Indian nation until long after caste has gone, and caste has not gone yet.
Now how is it, that with this great multitude, with its differ- ences of race and creed and the caste which perpetuates these, India is administered by a small body of British officers? The administration is divided up into many departments, such as forestry, export, public works, education, etc., in most of which it is found that official efforts were as footprints soon removed by the tide of race prejudice; but the department of public works with its bridges, railways and canals has made some permanent mark on India and made a step forward in civiliza- tion. The police department (so often referred to in the House of Commons in England by those who constitute themselves the spokesmen and representatives of India), is another depart- ment that does much useful work. It might have interested some of these critics (save that it would disappoint them by depriving them of capital), if they could have seen the office of one of its chief officers at the time it was proposed to close a police station. They would have found his table deluged with petitions from all ranks and classes of the Indian people against the closing, on the ground that the station was necessary
24
Indian Legislation
for the maintenance of peace. The people value the police system, and such defects as exist arise from the fact that Indians of lower rank have to be dealt with. In one case where certain allegations about maladministration were made, I had to examine certain documents which referred to 22 failures of justice over which well-known lawyers in England had petitioned the Secre- tary of State. That seemed a formidable indictment, but on examination I found that they covered 17 years — a fact which was not mentioned in the document. Then although these 22 cases were spread over 17 years, every one had been put right by the Court of Appeal.
Then we have the Indian Army, which will stand along with any part of the British Army in any part of the world. It is an army that has been trusted in the past, and has performed such deeds that we trust it for all time to come. I believe the Indian Army will follow its British officers anywhere, at any time, and will never disgrace the British flag.
I belonged to the Indian Civil Service, which is divided into political, financial and judicial branches. Although legally qualified, I did not enter the judicial branch. Now I do not consider the law courts the best place in which to study the native character. I am a Scotchman and as such have a great regard for the national character; but I should not like the Scotch to be judged by a foreigner who had gone through the police court and taken his sample there. No man who simply sees the people of India in the law courts could have an adequate conception of their character. I suppose you have heard many men say that the Indians are liars and only liars. But I would advise you to inquire whether the men who say this have only been in the law courts. The natives are liars in the courts, and why? Simply because they believe that all things are fair in love and war, and they believe the worst form of warfare is litigation. So they argue that he would only be an ass who was not a liar in court. I believe it would be a safe principle to lay down that when you go to take your place on the bench in court, in 999 cases out of 1,000 you will get a small percentage of falsehood in any witness; but I believe when you go down to the village to make an inquiry on the spot and you have all the people of the village gathered there, in 999 cases out of 1,000 you would not have the smallest amount of false-
25
Indian Legislation
hood in any statement. I believe in the absolute truthfulness of the native in his own village, and I have lived five or six months out of almost every year in the homes of the people and therefore am not talking at random. It is because the Indian village is nothing more or less than a family, and a lie would no more be tolerated in the Indian village than you would tolerate it in your own family.
The administration is divided up into numerous departments over which the district magistrate exercises surveillance, in addition to his own specific duties of land revenue officer. In this land system it is the aim of the government to devise some- thing that would be for the benefit of the people, and so bene- ficially has the system worked that when Egypt had to be administered, Indian officers were sent to explain the system, and the same thing happened in Ireland. What did that mean? It meant that India got men among the very best in the Empire, not because of their own qualities, but owing to the training and discipline that they underwent, whereby they were bound to become acquainted with the people. That training included a thorough study of native languages, both literary and in dialect, and the magistrate had to go on camping tours by which he thoroughly entered all the minutiae of village life. By this intercourse with the villagers difficulties were settled which otherwise would have had to go to court; crops and agricul- tural problems were examined, and every matter pertaining to the inner life of the people was attended to. The population of India is divided among the villages. India is an agricultural country, and the little village or hamlet is the great world of India. I have come to the time of life when I accept the Oriental view that wisdom, experience and common sense are what makes a man useful in the government of other men. The Indian has accepted that and there is a council of elders in the village chosen by the villagers, who are responsible for the good conduct of the village. What the people ask is that you will only let them alone to live the quiet old life. That is impossible, but I do not think the awakening should be too rude. They should be allowed to grow gradually into contact with the world and so get accustomed to it, and not plunged into it to their own ruin.
26
Indian Legislation
The unchanging character of the country was brought strongly before me on a visit to a Brahmin college where I saw the old customs and ceremonies that had been in vogue 3,000 years. It was, by the way, at this college I was invested with a degree which signified " Ocean of Logic and Truth"! I would like the outside world to know and understand these people of India. I greatly rejoice over the visit which our King is paying to India, and I think it is a great thing for the King to go. I do not believe there is any greater danger sur- rounding the Throne there than in any other part of the Empire. If any single man chooses to give his life deliberately in order to take the life of another, he may do so, and there are men who have given their lives there just as in other parts of the Empire, but in India anarchy and sedition are very narrowly limited; the vast mass of the people are loyal in their adhesion to the Crown. The going of the King emphasizes that which we have always felt to be our duty, namely, never to let fear of anarchy or sedition prevent us getting into touch with the people; and I am sure that the hearts of the British officers in India will be stayed and stirred by the fact that the King comes to visit them, and that the effect on the officers and people will be to perpetuate the rule in India of the British government, with those principles of righteousness, equality, sympathy and brotherliness which have characterized it in the past.
27
[ Monday, November 20 th, 1911 ]
THE EAST AND THE WEST
By J. A. M. AIKINS, K.C.
(M.P. for Brandon)
I ESTEEM it an honor to be called upon to address the Montreal Canadian Club in this city which is destined to remain the commercial metropolis of the Dominion, and whose great destiny is yet far from its zenith, and at that zenith is a bright star which tells all searchers for information that here is a spot where knowledge may be had and truth attained, and that spot is McGill University. My Alma Mater is Toronto and I am proud of her, but she has a great rival. The former is largely state aided, but the latter, McGill, was founded and expanded by the generosity and wisdom of the citizens of Montreal. And what they have done for her in the past, they can do again in the future. They have con- tributed millions, and all that is necessary is to ask them to contribute more millions, and create a temple of learning and culture which shall show Canadians and the people of the world, that while Montreal men are successful in business they are also wisely generous in the distribution of their money for the benefit of the people.
I am glad to be in this old Province of Quebec, because it was the pioneers of Quebec who made Canada and our great Confederation a possibility. It was on the soil of this Province that the blood of English and French was shed which nurtured the tree which has since borne fruit in unity and confederation; and I have no fear whatever of disruption or disunion amongst the eastern provinces, because they have found from history that, although there was separation prior to the Quebec Act of 1840, it was profitable for them to join. Since then they have been together so long there is no further risk of sepa- ration.
29
Tke East and the West
Our good neighbors of the splendid Commonwealth to the south of us took possession of the southern half of the continent and with characteristic business energy attracted to themselves a large population which has made that country the first in manufacturing industry, the first in agricultural output; a splendid record of what the people of this continent can do. And while they have appropriated the name which belongs to the whole of this continent we are willing to let them have it. They have left us the northern half, the land of the maple, the queen of the forest, the river and the lake, and we have given our country a name of beauty; it remains for Canadians to attach to that name the significance of honor, respect and national integrity, of virility and vigilance, so that the world may know us for a free nation and one of the leading units of the British Empire.
But although there is no danger of disruption amongst the eastern provinces there is a great and obvious danger in relation to the west of Canada. Not that this danger is immi- nent, but it is proper that I should call attention to it, that you, as wise men, may guard against the possibility of separa- tion. That danger lies in the possibility of separation in business and sentiment between eastern and western Canada. I trust the day will never come when there will be an eastern and western as there used to be an Upper and Lower Canada. But between the East and the West there lies a great region stretching 800 miles to the north of the Great Lakes which must always separate the populated districts of the East and West. It will be for the wisdom, the loyalty and sagacity of the people to bridge over that difficulty so that this country may always be one in business and sentiment.
The only way to preserve that unity is to have a community of business interest and national sentiment, by creating similar conditions in the West to those in the East.
We should have more industries and home markets in the West than you have in the East. I find here everywhere that you are progressing and prospering; farm lands have increased and the wheels of industry roll swiftly, because under a policy which peculiarly relates to Canadian industries splendid home markets have been created. We must have similar conditions in the West. If people say that the home market for the West
30
The East and the West
is to be the East, and that the manufacturing for the West is to be done in the East, I think you will find the West looking with longing eyes across the boundary to a place close by where industries and home markets are already existing — a consum- mation devoutly not to be desired. So it is proper that people should think of establishing industries in western Canada so that the farmers may not have to look to the East or abroad for a market for their products, but may also have their own home market.
An attempt was made by the C. P. R. to bridge that wide dividing country, and I am glad the late government continued that policy, so that soon we shall have the Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Northern, whose rails will be kept bright with the traffic carrying products from east to west and west to east. It would be a disaster to Canada if for any reason the traffic of the West should be diverted from the East to the south, and it will be for you to consider how best to avert that possi- bility. But unless there are business conditions in the West similar to those of the East, the tariff will not bear with equal incidence upon the West, which will inevitably create dissatis- faction. It is to the interest of all Canada that the industries of the West should be built up.
Do not forget that according to the last census the popula- tion of the East was 5,450,000, an increase of 723,000 in ten years. The same census showed the West to have 1,100,000, an increase in ten years of 150 per cent, as compared to only 15 per cent, in the East. It is important to consider where that population came from. I should consider that there are not more than 250,000 born Eastern Canadians in the West, so that the new Westerners can hardly be influenced very greatly be Eastern sentiment. I should consider that three-quarters of that increase came from Great Britain and the States, in about equal numbers, and the other part from continental Europe. So we have that vast population which has come to the West during the past ten years, knowing no more of the Canadian East than they do of Berlin or Washington.
The responsibility is with us to create a Canadian national sentiment amongst them, because they have gone there to get on and think more of the almighty dollar than they do of establishing a nationality in Canada. And we must create a
31
The East and the West
sentiment, because that is the powerful thing to bind the East and West together. People talk of sentiment as though it were a thing to be despised, mere sentimentalism. It is not. Sentiment mixed with wisdom and kindliness is the most powerful influence for good any person can conceive. It is that which will bind Eastern and Western Canada together with bonds as strong as steel — nothing can do it but a British Canadian national sentiment.
Then comes the question, how is that to be done? I do not know exactly how, but it is for you people in the East to assist in educating our people in that national sentiment. We must educate them religiously, and in the ordinary training of life, and must in addition instil into them the idea that they should be patriotic Canadians. You may talk as you like about unity of churches. I believe in it, and if you were out West and saw so much money and so many men wasted by strife amongst the denominations, you would say it is our duty to see these denominations joined so as to create sufficient church homes for the people who are pouring into our country. Nor am I going to disparage foreign missions, but I do think our first duty is to our own country. There must be unity in the Church if we are ever to expect unity in our country.
Then we must educate our children in the West. Socrates said that in order to secure a good population for Athens he would let all the population go except those under ten, and in the same way our hope of creating a national sentiment in the West is with the children. And in the schools we should teach them more Canadian national history. Tell them about Cartier and Champlain and Lasalle; about Wolfe and Montcalm, Laura Secord and General Brock and the United Empire Loyalists who left the United States because they could breathe more freely under the folds of the flag that has protected us in this Dominion for so many years. Tell them if you like of Lord Selkirk and Vancouver and Douglas and the Fathers of Con- federation, so that having all that imbued in their minds they may grow up loyal and proud Canadians.
Then there is another thing which can be done. The news- papers can do a great deal in the way of creating a unity of sentiment between the East and the West. But there are more words sent daily by despatches from the United States to the
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The East and the West
papers of Winnipeg many times over than come there from the different parts of Canada. They are sent there because they can be got more cheaply over American wires than from eastern Canada. And many of our people in western Canada see daily in our Canadian papers more of the social, political and commercial life of the United States than they do of our own country. Is that right? Instead of getting a wholesome loaf each day made in Canada to be assimilated into our con- stitutions, we are getting an American bun to absorb every morning.
How is that to be avoided? The newspaper men say that the cost of transmitting news from east to west and vice versa is too great. If this is so, it would pay our government ten thousand times over to subsidize a service or construct a tele- graph line of their own in order to avoid the possibility of the creation of an American sentiment and American ideas instead of Canadian sentiment and ideas. If I might make a suggestion it would be that the papers of Canada get together and present a petition to the government to this effect and I venture to say that all the members of Parliament would unite in seeing that that deficiency was corrected, so that each part of our country could know what was going on in the rest.
Then there is the Hudson Bay Railway: I am glad to know that it is to be constructed by this government, because we have a large number of people in the West from Great Britain who know little about eastern Canada and others who know little about Great Britain. I believe the time will come when the dominant voice in Canada will be from the West, and I trust when that time comes the people of the West will know and appreciate the chosen people of the East. But the one strong link to bind both East and West will be the British con- nection, and we may strengthen that by this short route to the Hudson Bay. I would also suggest that we have the cable lines connecting all parts of the Empire passing through Canada, so that as they carry the Empire news East and West it may be dropped off in the Dominion, so that we shall be always in touch with the different parts of the Empire.
I know that there are differences of religion and speech in Canada, but at the bottom of their souls, particularly in the East, there is but one common sentiment, and that is Canadian
33
The East and the West
Nationalism, and that a British Canadian Nationalism. And with your example we may make that grow in the West. Let us be one united people. Our country is too broad for the schisms and differences of smaller lands. Let us join to make broad and firm this Confederation, standing heart to heart, shoulder to shoulder, and hand in hand. There is before Canada a great and manifest destiny. The last great nation to arise in the world was the United States, and when we think of what she has done in less than a century, we must give her honor and respect.
But I believe the destiny of Canada is not to be a single great nation. Better far than that — a destiny which I believe has not been tried before, but I see no reason why it should not prove a success if she is true to herself — to be a vigorous nation, the leader amongst the free nations in the mightiest Empire the world has seen. Perhaps that sounds presump- tuous. But do not forget that the strength of a nation does not depend so much upon its numbers as upon the character and quality of its population. We may be but seven millions, but we ARE seven millions. And I believe there is no country under the sun which has a more virile, vigilant and righteous population than Canada; and no nation, no people, even if we are comparatively few, can boast of a brighter outlook for the future.
We think perhaps the British Empire is slow in its move- ments. It may be so, but that is no reason why Canada should not lead the way. If England is shy of entering upon preferen- tial trade relations with Canada, is that any reason why we should not enter into preferential relations with other parts of the Empire? If we do, it will not be very long before the United Kingdom joins that great trade confederation. And I would like to see this ideal before the people here, not only consolidating Canada by means of British Canadian Nationalism, but going still further and bringing Labrador and Newfoundland into our Confederation. And with these ideals before us we shall have greater wealth per capita than any other nation in the world, and greater resources. Do not be in too much hurry to get population, rather be careful in selecting it.
The time to reject or admit settlers is not when they get here, but when they board the steamers on the other side to
34
The East and the West
come here. I am pleased to tell you that perhaps 70 per cent, of our European population in the West is from Great Britain and the more northern countries, which will provide strong and virile stock.
Let us, as I have said, do all in our power to create a strong Confederation — the opportunity is before us. And remember that the things that are close and temporary are not the things most to be desired. We must take the long view, seeing things further off, the things which are eternal, and which will make for the real upbuilding of a united Canada from ocean to ocean under the British flag.
35
[ November 27th, IQII ]
COLONIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
By C. H. CAHAN, K.C.
IT was with considerable trepidation that I accepted, on Thursday last, an invitation to address you to-day in the place and stead of a distinguished visitor who is unavoidably absent; and indeed it is somewhat disconcerting to be asked to address one's fellow members upon so important a subject as that of " Colonial Responsibilities."
The ever varying changes which mark the progress and development of a colony necessitate the assumption by the colony of higher duties and larger responsibilities. The fringe of European settlements which were first established along the Atlantic coasts and up the St. Lawrence were directly depend- ent, like infants in swaddling clothes, upon the parent countries for their sustenance and support. As they became more pros- perous they were regarded as natural contributories to the wealth of the parent state; Colonial commerce and Colonial industries were severely repressed, or strictly regulated and con- trolled, in the interests and for the benefit of the commerce and industries of the parent state. Upon being conceded the right of responsible self-government in their own local affairs, these colonies began to assume, and later, upon the organization of the Canadian Confederacy, they actually did assume complete responsibility for raising their own revenues, for making their own expenditures, for their own internal development and for the proper administration of their own public services.
During the past fifty years, we have made progress, the like of which you will search far to find in any part of the civilized globe. We have organized vast Western districts, created their political, commercial, industrial and social institutions, developed extensive lines of internal communication by railways and canals,
37
Colonial Responsibilities
established wharves and docks, light-houses and buoys, factories and workshops, built cities and towns, opened up mines, cul- tivated vast sections of agricultural lands, and, with ever- increasing population and wealth, we have achieved an almost unprecedented progress and prosperity, almost wholly unaided by the government of the parent state, and actuated by a patriotic desire to develop to the utmost of our power the country which Providence has placed in our care.
We have accomplished this under the British North America Act, the charter which we received from the Imperial parliament, under which our activities and our responsibilities are strictly confined to Canada, and under which we have no right or authority to participate in Imperial or international affairs.
But having so far carried out the work set before us, we find ourselves to-day on the threshold of assuming new responsibili- ties, which have arisen by reason of our maritime situation on the Atlantic and on the Pacific, and of our possession and control of one-half of the North American Continent, which will be protected in the event of war by such defense as we can provide for our own territory.
The matter of our own territorial defense must be undertaken with the twofold object, first, of protecting our own homes against foreign aggression; and, secondly, to fulfil in some measure the responsibilities which are imposed upon us as one of the colonies of Great Britain.
First, we have undertaken the organization and improve- ment of the militia service of the country; and, although we sometimes hear the casual observation that our militia is chiefly useful for church parades, or to lend additional color and splendor to official balls and receptions, yet to me the voluntary per- formance of their military duties by the young men of the country seems to be an exhibition of the highest form of patriotism to which they might possibly give expression. It is an expression not only of a desire, but of a determination to protect our country -against possible foreign aggression.
In performance of our duty to protect Canada, with the approval of the government and parliament of Canada and, in fact, of the whole of the people of Canada, we have assumed control and responsibility for the maintenance of the fortifica- tions of the ports of Halifax and Esquimault; and in carrying
38
Colonial Responsibilities
out this work of giving adequate protection to our ports on the Atlantic and the Pacific, we are rendering a great service to the Empire of which we form a part.
The quarrels of the United Kingdom vitally concern Canada, for when Great Britain is at war, Canada, as a colony of Great Britain, cannot be at peace, and, in the event of war, a declara- tion of neutrality by Canada would be equivalent to a declaration of political independence.
It is admitted by the highest naval authorities that Colonial ports cannot be successfully protected by naval operations on distant seas, but the history of the Boer War tends to prove that Canada, with her chief harbours adequately protected by land defenses, and relying upon her internal resources, could defy the strongest European power and protect herself against invasions, except through the United States of America.
In the event of a great European Naval War, Canada, for her own protection, need only act upon the defensive. All offensive operations would necessarily be undertaken by the British Navy. Except in the one event of war between Great Britain and the United States, Canada, by adequately fortifying her own coasts, may safeguard her own territory independent of Imperial assistance. Moreover, the fortification of the Canadian ports on the Atlantic, such as St. John, Halifax, Sydney and the entrance to the River St. Lawrence, and Esquimault and Prince Rupert on the Pacific, thus providing safe harbours of refuge for mercantile shipping, coaling stations, dry docks, repairs for disabled ships, electrical means of com- munication, would be more than equivalent, so far as naval strength is concerned, to a contribution of several Dreadnoughts to the effective naval force of Great Britain.
Capt. Mahan, referring to the importance to Great Britain of such Colonial possessions, located in well chosen positions, says they are a great source of naval strength, that by providing naval bases, they enable any given work to be done by fewer ships. In thus defending herself on the Atlantic and on the Pacific from the possibility of attack by naval or military forces of a possible enemy, Canada would give effective service and assistance to the whole Empire.
England's navy is the first line of defense of the United Kingdom, and the naval policy of the United Kingdom is based
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Colonial Responsibilities
on the belief that any weakening of that line would be fatal to Great Britain, though it might not necessarily prove fatal to colonies which are protected by adequate coast defenses. A navy of the present or prospective future strength is absolutely necessary to Great Britain. If every British Colony should separate from the Empire, England would need not one man, nor one gun, nor one ship less; if Canada or South Africa should separate from the Empire, England would need many ships more.
To leave Canada's Atlantic ports undefended would be almost equivalent to a surrender of England's command of the sea, for her command of the sea, next to the protection of the British Coasts against possible invasion, is absolutely necessary to provide sustenance for the people of the British Isles. Eng- land requires annually at least 150,000,000 bushels of foreign or Colonial wheat, and in the event of that supply being cut off, Great Britain would fall by starvation within a few months of the commencement of a great maritime war.
Canada's great work, in recent years, in opening up the Canadian North-West by its internal water-routes and by its three great trans-continental railways, with the consequent influx of population and ever-increasing agricultural develop- ment, has been of first importance for the security not only of the British Isles but of the whole British Empire.
An eminent authority upon Empire defense says that: —
" The encouragement, development and expansion of the Canadian wheat and flour exports to Great Britain is not only the duty of Imperial economists but must be the first con- sideration of all defense bodies; in it lies the foundation of the Empire's security."
I do not suggest that we undertook the agricultural develop- ment of the North-West for the purpose of conserving Imperial interests; but I do say that as an incident, or as a result of that development the security of the Empire has been con- served. To the extension of this development the financial resources and the best energies of the Canadian government and people might well be devoted, in the sure confidence that in so doing they are increasing the sources of food supply of the United Kingdom — making Canada, in fact, the granary of the Empire — and making Great Britain more and more inde- pendent of foreign states for the sustenance of her people in
40
Colonial Responsibilities
times of war as well as in times of peace. Quebec is ap- proximately 2,500 miles, or six days steam from Plymouth, England, and of all inter-Imperial trade routes this is the shortest and most easily protected during a European naval war. By it all narrow water-ways and hostile ports are avoided, and the responsibility of the British Navy for commerce protection is reduced to the possible minimum.
In assuming this responsibility for the protection of Canadian ports, in taking over and assuming control of the fortifications of Halifax and Esquimault — responsibilities which have been undertaken with almost unanimous consent of the Canadian Parliament and of the Canadian people — Canada has, in a measure, relieved the Imperial government of the responsibility for Canada's defense, increased in a large measure the effective- ness of the British Navy upon the high-seas; and, in carrying these important works to completion, Canada will effectively assist in protecting the great trade route to the United Kingdom.
There remains, nevertheless, one source of danger to Canada in the fact that for over 4,000 miles the boundaries of the American Republic are contiguous to those of this country. For nearly 100 years there has been peace between Canada and the United States, and although it is devoutly to be wished that that peace may continue for centuries to come, the possibility of its breach is omnipresent. I do not say that conflict between Canada and the United States is probable, but no intelligent observer of political events can deny that it is quite possible; and that possibility is, in my opinion, increased by the evident determination of the Canadian people to maintain their political independence of the United States.
There are obvious questions of vital concern to both which may arise between the United States and Great Britain that would make war between the two countries inevitable. j
I do not overlook the fact of 100 years of peace between this country and the United States, nor the possibility, if not the probability, of the adoption by the Government of the United States of the pending arbitration treaty; but the great increase of population in the Republic, and its need for expansion, for the acquisition of unexploited stores of natural wealth, must be the source of an ever-increasing danger to this country.
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Colonial Responsibilities
I believe that the increase in population of the United States, the absolute need which every great industrial country finds for commercial expansion, for creating new markets, for obtaining control of larger supplies of natural resources, — all this implies the possibility, if not the probability, of a conflict arising between this country and the United States.
We who have come to years of manhood realize, by reason of our own observation, that the world has not yet emerged from that state of civilization which is dominated by rude physical force, in which he will take who has the power and he may keep who can. In our time we have seen the map of Europe re-adjusted by the nations by force of arms. In the neighbouring Republic we have seen over a million citizen soldiers in the field contending for political supremacy. We have recently seen the forcible acquisition of Hawaii, of Porto Rico and of Panama. We have seen our neighbours extending their sphere of influence to far south of the Isthmus; and recent events in Egypt, in Morocco, in Tripoli and again and again in the Balkan States, have borne witness that the history of the past is the history of the present and of the future, that we may only hope to maintain our political liberty, and secure the heritage that Providence has placed in our keeping, by taking opportune and adequate measures for our own territorial defense.
By the military and naval authorities of the United States such a war is seriously and intelligently contemplated; and to those who desire to understand and appreciate the resources which Canada must employ to maintain an effective defense, in the event of such a war, a careful study of the events of 1812 to 1814 is particularly instructive.
This island of Montreal, with its population of 600,000 people — the very centre of the industrial and commercial life of this Dominion — the outport of the products of nearly half a continent — is at the present time utterly undefended against the possibility of attack from across the border, 40 miles to the south of us. Near that border, within striking distance of Montreal, lies Plattsburg which is as completely supplied with all the modern munitions of war as any other military station within the confines of the United States. Within similar striking distance of our border are located similar arsenals,
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similarly equipped, the names of which it is now needless to mention.
On the Great Lakes which form a portion of our boundary line — although by the terms of the Rush-Bagot Treaty the armed ships of both countries, excepting four vessels of 100 tons each, are strictly prohibited on the Great Lakes — there exist to-day several hundred of American steamships, including whalebacks and freighters of every description, which are capable within a few hours of being transformed into an effective naval force; while in the American lake ports, and in arsenals in connection by rapid railway communication with those Ports, there are adequate supplies of all the munitions of war for the equipment of these ships for naval operations against the unprotected towns and cities on the Canadian lake-front.
The authorities, who are responsible for the defense of Canada, cannot long ignore the military and naval preparedness of our peaceful neighbour to the south. They must, sooner or later, take adequate measures for the due protection of our internal water-ways and great trans-continental lines of railway communication. And, to that end, I would welcome the com- pletion of the Georgian Bay Canal; not only by reason of its commercial value, in placing Lake Huron freight by cheap water carriage within seventy hours of Montreal, but also by reason of the fact that the construction of this great inland waterway, farther north of the border lakes, is a work of supreme military and naval importance to Canada.
But in addition to expenditures by the Canadian treasury which are primarily made for Canadian defense, and in respect of which the Canadian government has assumed responsibility, there is the further suggestion that Canada should contribute to the treasury of the United Kingdom; or, what is practically the same thing in effect, contribute the cost of a certain number of ships, for the purpose of maintaining the undisputed supremacy of the British Navy. It is admitted that if every colony were lost to the Empire, the adequate protection of the United Kingdom would require not unit less of the present or proposed future strength of the British Navy. That navy is the most powerful instrument for peace or for war throughout the world. It is maintained solely by the tax-payers domiciled in the United Kingdom, who alone exercise a voice and a vote in all
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Colonial Responsibilities
questions of war and of peace, in all questions of international relationship, in all questions which decide the destinies of the Empire.
In deciding those vital Imperial issues the 13,000,000 of white people inhabiting the colonies have now no voice directly or indirectly. In the control of those expenditures for Imperial purposes and in the administration of those Imperial affairs of serious concern to the inhabitants of the Over-Seas Dominions, British citizens, who inhabit or are domiciled in these Dominions, do not participate to the slightest extent.
Under these conditions, is Canada morally bound, in addition to making adequate provision for her own territorial defense, to assume the responsibility of contributing to the Imperial Exchequer for the safe-guarding of Imperial interests, to assume the obligation to assist in maintaining an Imperial Navy, while Canadians are denied the Imperial franchise, denied equality of citizenship within the Empire, denied any participation directly or indirectly in the control of the destinies of the Empire ?
I am not dealing with the matter of spasmodic, voluntary contributions, such as the citizens of London made in response to the eloquence of Pitt, when the English Exchequer was exhausted, and the fate of England, and, in fact, the liberties of all Europe were believed to be trembling in the balance, and when the voluntary contributions of the London merchants equipped and supplied the allied troops, who subsequently withstood the shock of conflict with the legions of the first Napoleon. I am not referring to such intermittent subsidies as England has paid time and time again for the relief and assistance of her continental allies. I am asking myself, and I am asking you, whether we, Canadians, should annually and continuously assume the financial burdens of Empire, so long as we are denied admission to the councils of the Empire ?
We are told that Canada's voice and vote, in the proportion of 7,000,000 of her population to the 45,000,000 of the British Isles, would necessarily prove weak and ineffective; but that suggestion does not altogether discourage me. I recall that when my native province of Nova Scotia entered the Canadian Confederacy, having only one-tenth of the population of the whole Dominion, we were told the same story of our comparative
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Colonial Responsibilities
unimportance and inferiority in numbers; but the fact is that, since her admission, Nova Scotia, with that unobtrusive humility and modesty, so characteristic of her sons, has ever since been endeavouring, and that too with a fair measure of success, to administer the affairs of the whole Dominion.
We are told that all the financial resources of Canada are required for the construction and maintenance of her great public works, and the development of her vast districts of fertile lands that are yet untouched by the plow, for the opening up of her mines, the utilization of her forests, for overcoming the discouraging physical difficulties which always confront the colonist in a comparatively new country. And all this is un- doubtedly true; but it is not the whole truth. We can if we will, undertake additional obligations, but do we WILL to do so, except on the basis of equality of citizenship within the Empire ?
Now what is the attitude which the English government of the day assumes with regard to the suggestion that the self- governing colonies should have the right or privilege of partici- pating in the councils of the Empire ? In respect of the Hague Conference and the Prize Court Convention, in respect of the recent Declaration of London, which so vitally affected Colonial import and export trade, in respect of the recent consolidation of the Merchants' Shipping Acts, which affected the shipping interests of all the colonies, I cannot find that the Colonial governments were consulted before the conven- tions were completed, or the Act of the Imperial Parliament had been passed. There is nothing of novelty in this attitude of the Imperial government toward the Colonial governments; and it is doubtless owing to the extent to which we have so often deceived ourselves by the frequent use of such words and phrases as " Nation," " Nationality," " Self-governing Dominion," " Co-ordinate unit in the Empire " and the like, as applicable to Canada, that the cold fact of our subordinate Colonial position is sometimes realized by us as a disagreeable surprise.
But the attitude of the British government was made even more clearly apparent at the recent Imperial Conference in London, when its President, Mr. Asquith, speaking on behalf of that government, and referring to Sir Joseph Ward's propo-
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Colonial Responsibilities
sition that the self-governing Dominions should be admitted to participate in the Councils of the Empire, said :—
" For what does Sir Joseph Ward's proposal come to? I might describe the effect of it without going into details, in a couple of sentences. It would impair, if not altogether destroy, the authority of the Government of the United Kingdom in such grave matters as the conduct of foreign policy, the con- clusion of treaties, the declaration and maintenance of peace, or the declaration of war, and, indeed, all those relations with Foreign Powers, necessarily of the most delicate character, which are now in the hands of the Imperial Government, subject to its responsibility to the Imperial Parliament. That authority cannot be shared."
The Premier of England was not referring to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in its capacity as the local legislature of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales — in which the colonies have neither right nor desire to participate — he was referring to that Parliament as the supreme legislature of the British Empire, and as solely responsible for its Imperial destinies; that jurisdiction, that authority, that responsibility, he declared, could not be shared with the people of the self-governing do- minions. The administrative and legislative jurisdictions of the Dominion of Canada, of the Commonwealth of Australia, of the Union of South Africa, must, in the future as in the past, be restricted, respectively, to prescribed geographical areas and to objects of purely local concern !
If that declaration of Mr. Asquith were the last word to be said with regard to the extension and development of con- stitutional government, of representative institutions, of popular liberty in this Empire, — with regard to conceding to the Domin- ions beyond the seas the right to participate in the administra- tion of Imperial affairs, the right to enjoy in the highest degree and to the fullest extent the privileges of free citizens within the Empire, — I, for one, although I am proud of the Empire, although I am Imperialist by blood, by tradition, by education — if that were the last word — I would be willing to devote my best energies for the rest of my life to take Canada out of the Empire. But, gentlemen, Premier Asquith has not said the last word with regard to this question. The whole history of constitutional government in England bears witness to the fact that the liberties of the people have
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Colonial Responsibilities
ever been extended, when they themselves have formed in their own minds more definite ideals of political liberty, and have formulated demands that those ideals should find expres- sion in concrete, definite form, in concessions from the Crown or in legislative enactments. Look back upon the history of the past ! I need not but mention the Charter of Henry, the Charter of Stephen, the Magna Charta of John, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, the Reform Acts. What were these but concessions of ever-increasing popular rights and privileges to the citizens of the United Kingdom ?
The British constitution is the result of a gradual consolida- tion and development of political principles which have with- stood the test of experience; and its success is due to the dis- crimination with which appropriate methods have from time to time been adopted to satisfy recognized popular needs. The general tendency in the development of that constitution, and in fact of all recent political history, has been towards the esta- blishment of popular rights on a representative basis.
The records of the constitutional development of the British American Colonies are replete with evidences of constant change of opinion in Great Britain with respect to the political liberties of the Colonies; and, although we must await with patience the realization of our hopes, we should not be dismayed by the deliberate pronouncement of any government at any period of our national development.
May we not, then, look forward with confidence to the time when the self-governing colonies shall receive the Imperial franchise — a franchise that Rome in the ever memorable days of the Emperor Augustus freely conferred upon her Roman colonies — a franchise that shall at length constitute an Imperial citizenship, on a truly representative basis — the highest ideal of political liberty to which the people of Canada could possibly aspire.
Gentlemen, even while you are sitting at our luncheon to-day, this Empire may be entering upon one of the most momentous crises of its history. Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Minister of England, is now making to the English Parliament his explanation of the policy for which the government, of which he is a distinguished member, is responsible in regard
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Colonial Responsibilities
to international relations with France and Germany, with more particular reference to affairs in Morocco. That explanation with respect to the recent possibilities of war may result in his own dismissal, or possibly in the downfall of the government which he represents. That war, if it had occurred, would have been of vital, of paramount interest to the people of Canada, as well as to the people of the United Kingdom. But will that government stand, or will that government fall, by reason of its support, or by reason of its non-support, by the thirteen millions of British citizens who inhabit the Over-Seas Domin- ions? Will that government stand or fall by reason of the support or the opposition of the elected representatives of a million and a half intelligent, patriotic and vitally interested electors of Canada? No, in those matters, we indeed occupy a subordinate position. In those matters we have no voice, no vote, no responsibility, absolutely no control.
Gentlemen, I look forward to the time when we shall have that vote and that voice.
I confess that my confidence in the speedy realization of this expectation is increased by the equanimity with which Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and other recognized leaders of public opinion in England, apparently welcome the enfranchise- ment of the women of Great Britain; and I cannot conceive that a voice and a vote in Imperial affairs should be conceded to the belligerent suffragettes who parade the London streets and at times fill the London jails, while that same Imperial franchise is denied to the million and a half of male electors who, loyal to the same Throne, and in sure confidence of their complete success, are laying broad and deep the secure foundations of this great Canadian Dominion.
Gentlemen, I look forward, then, to the day when the exercise of the Imperial franchise shall not be restricted to the inhabitants of the British Isles, when the rights of Imperial citizenship shall not be strictly confined to those dwelling in the United Kingdom, when young Canadians who aspire to high positions in the government of the Empire need not change their domicile to the United Kingdom in order to participate in Imperial affairs, when descendants of European races, who devote their fortunes and their lives to the magnificent work
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Colonial Responsibilities
of developing the [Dominions of the Crown beyond the seas, shall enjoy, in full measure, the pledge of King James the First, who ; declared in the first charter granted by him for the founding of the colonies on the Atlantic Coast of America : —
" That all and every the persons being our subjects, which shall go and inhabit within the said colony and plantation, and every their children and posterity, which shall happen to be born within any of the limits thereof, shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of our dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of England, or in any other of our Dominions."
That was the pledge of liberty which was made to the first British settlers upon this continent — a pledge that, although leaving their homes to found new colonies beyond the seas, British citizens should not thereby deprive themselves and their children of any of the rights and privileges of British citizenship. It was the violation of that pledge that caused the people of the United States to sever their allegiance to the British Crown. It is by the renewal and by the fulfilment of that pledge that England will at length redeem the errors of the past. By admitting the inhabitants of the colonies to participate in the highest representative institutions of the Empire, England will bind them for all time to the British Crown, to which we all, irrespective of race or creed, have given our full and free alle- giance.
Gentlemen, we have been content, and probably most of us would have been content, for our day and generation, at least, to have continued in the old paths of internal develop- ment, of industrial and commercial progress, of growth in popu- lation, unifying and invigorating our own national life, increasing our own national strength; but if and when we are called upon * to assume, in whole or in part, the obligations and responsi- bilities of Empire, we must not be denied admission to the corresponding rights and responsibilities of Imperial citizenship, the right to participate in the Imperial Councils, and in the administration of Imperial affairs.
Such issues are worthy of discussion by the members of our Canadian Club. They indicate the higher ideals of citizen-
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ship to which we may rightfully aspire. The consideration of them, the discussion of them raises us above the petty questions of personal politics, of racial and religious disputes and differences, and tends to invigorate and vitalize our national life with new , • hopes, higher aspirations and broader national ideals.
50
[ December 4th,
SUPREME COURT OF THE WORLD
By HON. H. B. F. MACFARLAND
THIS is certainly an occasion for what Mr. Gladstone called the "thrift of time," since you are all busy men and must be anxious to get away, but I must take a minute or two to say how glad I am to be back in Montreal, where I always feel perfectly at home, possibly because there are so many Scotch here. Even the Indians call themselves Micmacs down at Mai Baie where I have my summer home.
The subject I am going to deal with requires a point of view such as you in Montreal are accustomed to take. It is spoken of as an ideal and we who advocate it are called idealists. But I am happy to discuss it in a city where ideals and idealists are regarded as practical. The glory of your city is not your suprem- acy in business, distinguished as that is. Your real glory is in such institutions as McGill University. And the fact that you appreciate this has just been shown by your splendid subscrip- tion to your University, as well as that a short time ago to the Y. M. C. A., the mother of all such institutions on the North American Continent, whose name is known all the world over, as well as that of its Secretary, Mr. Budge. So I need no apology for coming to you to speak to-day about an ideal. More- over, this ideal has now been adopted by the most practical statesmen in the world, including our own Secretary of State, Mr. Knox, who is what is known as a corporation lawyer as well as a great statesman. He is representing us in this matter and Sir Edward Grey, who is an entirely practical statesman, is representing you, without mentioning others who are interested.
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Supreme Court of the World
This idea of a Supreme Court of the World is an ideal which many of us believe must be realized during this twentieth century for the judicial settlement of all international disputes. The second Hague Conference adopted unanimously the idea and worked out in detail a plan for an International Court of Arbitral Justice that would be the beginning of such a Supreme Court of the World. The advantage would be much more than an Inter- national Arbitration Tribunal, with which we are familiar from the Hague Conferences. It is now in an experimental form, al- though for a century the United States and Great Britain leading the world have, in a hundred arbitrations, maintained the prin- ciple. But this Arbitral Justice Court which will later occupy the attention of the intelligent world will be a real Court with real judges and real lawyers, not diplomats but men skilled in international law. Its conclusions are to be real decisions, like those of any other Court, with precedents to be established and followed, instead of sporadic decrees by temporary bodies. In the course of time it will accumulate a body of binding inter- national law, instead of the maxims now called international law, which are binding upon no one and set aside whenever a war is desired. Instead of leaving international disputes to occasional Arbitration Tribunals, a regular practice of taking such cases to this Court will be established by the nation and this will do more to prevent war than anything else, giving as it would to the world a competent permanent tribunal. The nations would soon learn the habit of resorting to it, which is more important than anything else except the character of the tribunal itself. Just as in the United States the several Sovereign States go to the Supreme Court, so the nations of the world which now about equal in number the states of the Union, would go to such an International Court. At the beginning, our Supreme Court was viewed with suspicion and even with disfavor and it was thought that it would never command the confidence of the states of the Union. The first Chief Justice, Jay, and the second, Ellsworth, both resigned and went to offices in their own states, thinking their work there of more importance than that of Chief Justice of the United States. And when Jay was asked to go back again, he wrote a letter saying he did not think it worth while, and that he believed the Supreme Court of the United States would never command the attention or the support and confidence of
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the people; therefore he thought he would be of more use in New York State than as Chief Justice of the United States. Imagine a Chief Justice of the United States going back to Louisiana believing that he had a larger and more useful field there than at Washington. Of course it was the character of the judges and their opinions, and especially the character of Mar- shall, that won the confidence of the country to this Supreme Court of the United States. Just as individuals no longer settle their difficulties by arms, except perhaps in some of the mountain districts of the United States, but resort to public courts — es- tablished courts according to the habit of centuries — so the nation having confidence in such an International Court would no longer want to settle their differences by war.
As I came up from Washington, I looked at the old duelling ground of Bladenburg where, before the Civil War, many of our leading statesmen appeared in duels. And I was at Weehawken where Alexander Hamilton, one of the greatest men who ever served the United States, was killed by Aaron Burr because he did not dare decline the challenge, lest it would cost him the confidence of the people and the leadership which he thought he might have to exercise later for the salvation of his country, — and that was as recently as 1804.
We can see that in this comparatively short time there has been great progress in the settlement of individual disputes and disputes between States in our Union and, of course, through International Arbitration, in the settlement of difficulties between nations of the world. Even now Great Britain, the United States and France, the leaders in the Second Hague Conference, are engaged in adopting Arbitration Treaties which will be binding upon them, and we have every reason to believe they will be ratified by the Governments of the three nations. Our Senate is very active in securing the early adoption of this International Court of Arbitral Justice, and we have every reason to believe that all the great Powers of the world and some of the smaller ones, have agreed to set up such a Court at an early date, not later than the next Hague Conference, which should be held by 1915; and without doubt on the initiative of Russia or some other great power, such a Conference will be called.
The chief difficulty in the way of setting up this International Court of Arbitral Justice is the one the Second Hague Conference
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Supreme Court of the World
referred to — its Constitution and the selection of judges. That was the one thing left open. The Convention sets forth in detail how the Court shall operate, its rules of procedure, etc., but they had to leave the question of the selection of judges and the Con- stitution of the Court to the Powers, because they could not possibly agree at the Hague. The forty-six nations represented there were the greater and lesser Powers and the lesser Power is always jealous of the greater Power, and they were demanding direct representation upon this proposed Court as they have now upon the ordinary Hague Tribunal. There are one hundred names from which the Board of Arbitrators are drawn and every nation has its representation on an equality, the smallest Central American republic equally with Great Britain. But it was obvious that there could not be a Court of forty-six members and they would not agree upon a method of making it smaller and practical, and so left that to further negotiations.
Now the Powers, under the initiative of the United States and Great Britain, are considering, in diplomatic exchanges, the Constitution of this Court. It is obvious that the great Powers which would also probably furnish the greatest judges must be directly represented, and the only other thing to be done is to give the smaller Powers representation under rotation under some method to be determined upon. That has already been agreed to and the adherence of sufficient of the smaller nations to secure the success of the Court has already been secured.
With such a Court, composed of nine or fifteen judges at the outside, those great jurists who would be the judges, should by their wise and just decisions win for it the confidence of the nations and draw them to it. That is what our Government and your Government and the Governments of all the great Powers now confidently expect. It may be that the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of peace between Great Britain and the United States, in which your great Dominion is to have such an honorable part, will be signalized by the announcement that a sufficient number of nations have agreed to make the establish- ment of this International Court of Arbitral Justice a certainty. As a lawyer I am disposed to a Court rather than an Arbitral Tribunal. You know that in many cities and states, and proba- bly in Canada, there is already machinery for the arbitration of differences between business men especially; but my resort is
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rather to the Court (when the lawyers cannot keep you out of Court, as they should) rather than to the arbitration principle. But anyone can see that a Court has great advantages for the end we and all intelligent, civilized men have in view, the main- tenance of the peace of the world. We are asked, of course, amongst other questions, how are the decrees of such a Court to be enforced. We answer that we think it is not to be by an inter- national police force of neutralized armies and navies, such as has been suggested for the execution of the decrees even of Arbitra- tion Tribunals, but that it is to be done by that Power which really rules the world, the force of public opinion. That is what enforces the decrees of the Supreme Court of the United States, not its army and navy. Justice Brewer used to say when asked how it was done, it was by a woman, a clerk in the marshall's office of the Supreme Court, who got out the mandates of the Court and sent them to the inferior courts. You know the Supreme Court of the United States is obeyed without question from one end of the Union to the other, owing to the irresistible force of public opinion which now governs everybody. There is now, thanks to the multiplication of the means of communica- tion, to the submarine cable, the telegraph, the wireless, the telephone, a diffusion of news which has led to a national public opinion in every country and even to an international public opinion. We all sit around one breakfast table and read in our morning paper the news of the whole world and make our com- ments upon it for ourselves regardless of the comments of the newspapers. We are all editors and make, if we do not write, editorials, and that consensus of opinion of educated, patriotic men governs Montreal and Canada, the United States and the whole world.
There lies the sanction of international law, which has never been supported by armies and navies and cannot be, any more than can the Christian religion. But international law is sup- ported now by international public opinion which has the abso- lute power to punish the refractory. No nation, civilized or un- civilized, worthy of name and place, would defy the conscience of the world by refusing to obey the decree of an international court to which it had submitted its claim. Ostracism, moral, if not legal, and none the less effective for being moral, would be more effective than coercion by force.
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Supreme Court of the World
Now that the progress of the nineteenth century has made all the world one neighborhood and the twentieth century is making it a brotherhood, even the most backward nation under- stands that it cannot continue to live outside the family. Eco- nomic and financial reasons forbid; the appeal to its selfishness forbids, even though an appeal to unselfishness does not; it must keep the peace to live within the family to its own best advantage, just as the individual in society must keep the peace or get out- side and become an outcast.
All the difficulties in the way of a judicial settlement of inter- national disputes are yielding gradually, as things have always done in this world, to proper treatment. The obstacles are no longer insurmountable, progress is made and the dream of the poet is becoming the orderly plan of statesmen. The processes of history as of Nature often come to fulfilment quickly after long period of seeming delay. The old order suddenly gives place to the new, just as the once world-wide Spanish colonial empire vanished from the map in a day at the touch of war. In the midst of patient and persistent efforts, at the opportune moment the long desired change comes rapidly, perhaps like the King- dom of Heaven, without observation.
56
[ December nth, 1911 ]
NORTHERN RHODESIA; THE EVOLUTION OF A DEPENDENCY
By W. L. HICHENS, of Liverpool, England
Chairman of Cammell Laird Company, Ltd.
WHEN you did me the honor of asking me to address you here to-day, I, like most Englishmen who are not professional orators, felt a natural fear of getting up to make a speech. At the same time I accepted the invitation with alacrity because I felt that the pleasure of meeting so representative a group of Montreal citizens would far outweigh any qualms I might feel — the qualms would be transitory, while the pleasure would be permanent.
The reason that I chose the subject of Northern Rhodesia was partly because I thought it might interest you to learn at first hand something about one of the less known dependencies of the British Empire and partly because the story of Northern Rhod>esia is typical of so many parts of the Empire.
I don't propose to weary you with a mass of statistics, which, at the best are somewhat indigestible, but after a meal are perfectly intolerable. A few simple facts will be enough for my purpose. There are, as you probably know, or were until quite recently, three Rhodesias, Southern, North Western and North Eastern. From the South African standpoint there is all the difference in the world between Southern Rhodesia and the two Northern territories. Southern Rhodesia marches on the borders of the Transvaal and is known there as the white man's country, where Europeans can thrive and multiply and possess the land. The idea of every South African is that Southern Rhodesia will one day join the great South African
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Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
Union — that it will do so sooner or later is, humanly speaking, a certainty.
The Northern territories were, until recently, two in number, but quite recently they have amalgamated, and now there is one Administrator for both, and they may be regarded as one. Northern Rhodesia is not a white man's country. Probably as far as one can tell for all time it will be predominantly a native country. The mysterious dividing line in the minds of South Africans between tropical and South Africa is the Zam- besi, which is the southern border line of Northern Rhodesia. The area of the country is about equal to that of France and the United Kingdom put together, but it has only a small population of about eight hundred and fifty thousand. The white population is only about twelve hundred all told, and in North Eastern Rhodesia, the largest segment, there are only some 250 white persons at the present time.
I must pass by, with brief reference, the principal features of the country. Everyone has heard of the Victoria Falls, that magnificent piece of wild Nature's handiwork. I have not seen Niagara as yet, so I am not able to say which of the two is the finer, but Rhodesians love to tell a story of an Ameri- can who, after seeing the Victoria Falls, cabled to his family "They have got us licked." Every sportsman knows that Northern Rhodesia is a hunter's paradise, probably the best big game country in the world. No doubt East Africa is better known because it is more largely advertised and more accessible. A distinguished neighbor of yours once went there on a shooting trip and his movements were not left altogether unnoticed.
Most people also know that Northern Rhodesia is a prey to the ravages of the sleeping sickness, a disease for which no cure has as yet been found, and which has devastated whole tracts of Central Africa. It is not so serious in Northern Rhodesia as elsewhere, but the regions where the tsetse fly, which transmits the disease, is found, have to remain an unin- habited desert. Another species of this fly is equally fatal to domestic animals and it is confined to certain belts of the country, but as these are fairly frequent, animal transport is very diffi- cult. The existence of these two scourges retards the develop- ment of the country seriously, but there is little doubt that they will disappear with the advance of civilization.
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Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
The normal method of travelling in Northern Rhodesia is either on foot or by a masheelah, a kind of hammock borne by two or four natives, according to your size. I personally was a four native man. They go at a jog trot, singing as they run, and looking as though they enjoyed their work. They will take you forty miles a day if you urge them to it, but they are not anxious to go more than four or five. When one travels there his retinue is large. I travelled there with another European and we had seventy persons to look after our bodily welfare. I must admit that one feels a bit ashamed to think that two people require seventy to look after them, while the ordinary savage can look after himself and one seventieth part of you, also. However, wages are small, the ordinary pay of the natives being about seventy-five cents a month.
But the wants of the native, as you can imagine, are corre- spondingly small. The chief expenditure he has to make is his hut tax, which is about one month's pay a year, and in addition to that he wants a small piece of calico, a little salt, and a few other things which can be purchased with another month's work. So he works two months a year and during the rest of the time sits down and enjoys himself, because all the toiling and gathering of the crops is done by the women. The cost of living is very cheap there. The normal meat consists of chicken. You get them at every meal and get very sick of them. The fowl costs threepence, but he makes up for the poor estimate in which he is held by being most out- rageously tough.
There are a number of different tribes in Northern Rhodesia with different languages and customs. One tribe can be dis- tinguished by the fact that all its members extract their two front teeth and regard their appearance as extremely attractive — which is more than anyone else does. The custom originated by the fact that at one time they were enslaved by another tribe and this mark was put upon them as an indignity. How- ever, in the course of time they forgot about this and began to look upon it with pride. Another tribe plaits long grasses into their hair, which they arrange so as to stick up in a long spike about two feet in length. The origin of this is that they live in a country overgrown with long reeds about their own height, so that about the only way they can distinguish each other is by these spiky columns on their head.
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Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
Northern Rhodesia is, as you know, a great field for mission- ary enterprise, and has been so ever since the days of Livingstone. It must be admitted that the efforts of the missionaries have not been altogether successful, partly because their teaching has not been sufficiently simplified. They have a way of making the natives learn a vast number of dogmas which they cannot possibly understand or assimilate. In consequence, they hesi- tate to take the Christian religion. Another and probably more serious reason why Christianity is not making more rapid progress is that the native is a convinced polygamist; from his point of view one wife is altogether inadequate. Then there is this justification from their point of view, that in the mind of the ordinary native a wife is an asset for which a definite sum has to be paid, and who has a definite monetary value for him, whereas in moments of rash frankness, I have heard English men confess that their wives were really a liability.
I remember while I was there the son of a prominent chief suddenly renounced the Christian religion on the grounds that he wanted a second wife, and his arguments were difficult to meet. He said, "My beau ideal is King Solomon, and I would rather follow the splendid example of that illustrious potentate than the advice of my missionary friends."
Mohammedanism, on the other hand, is making rapid strides, partly because it is a much simpler religion and more easily grasped and principally because that religion permits of polygamy. They are a pretty happy, but improvident people, except in the eastern parts of the country, where they have to some extent come under the influence of the Arabs. They are extremely lazy and indifferent to their personal prosperity. I have passed through whole tracts of country at a time when the harvest has been reaped for a long time and the people were in destitution, not because of lack of land to cultivate, but because they would not botrfer to till it. They till a small fraction of the land required for their maintenance and when the end of the year comes they wander about looking for roots and berries in extreme misery, but this does not teach them wisdom, and as soon as the new crop is reaped they forget all about it.
Then there is another cause why they go short of food at certain times of the year. There is a hard and fast distribution
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Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
of labor between the men and women. Certain duties are regarded as women's work and certain duties as men's work, and the man would no more think of poaching upon the preserves of the women than the women would of invading the proper sphere of the men. The underlying idea in the minds of these simple children of Nature is that there is a fundamental differ- ence between men and women which should be expressed in action, so that the one sex may be the complement of the other and not a feeble imitation of it. In fact, there is one thing a native dislikes more than a mannish woman and that is a wom- anish man. I sometimes think, when I am unduly oppressed by the weight of modern civilization that possibly we may have to go back to the wilds of Africa and learn again the primitive wisdom of these children of the woods.
I often wonder what would happen if the women of that country were to adopt the advanced notions of the modern suffra- gette of our own countries. And I wonder what would happen if they were to try and enforce their views by tying themselves, say with wisps of grass, to the palisades of the kraal of their chieftain, or refuse to eat their mealie meals. I wonder what would happen, but I think I could give a good guess.
One word about the administration of the country. Before the British occupation it was a continual prey to war, pillage, slavery and even cannibalism. Now all that is changed. In fact, I think one may truly say that Northern Rhodesia is the most peaceful country in the world. I know of no country where you can travel with greater security than there — and all this after a comparatively short administration. There are astonishingly few European officials in the country, and one may go into a vast district of a hunderd thousand or more natives and find the only white man there is a boy from Oxford or Cambridge, who has the whole district completely under his control and is obeyed implicity, although he has no force behind his back.
I had a long talk once with a Roman Catholic French Bishop who had lived there thirty years, or before the British occupa- tion. I asked him what the natives thought of the British rule, and he said that they regarded it as ideal in comparison with anything they had ever known before. In fact, he added, there was only one thing they objected to, and that was paying taxes. But that is a great testimony to the effect of British
61
Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
rule in these countries. Whether the natives will be as con- tented in the future as they are now remains to be proven. But if one takes the analogy of India or Egypt, it seems to me quite probable that, in a generation or two, they will forget all about past miseries, and will merely do what everybody else does, put all their personal grievances and troubles on to the Govern- ment of the day. That is what has happened in India and Africa and Egypt.
' Such is Northern Rhodesia under the British South African Company, which is the last of those great trading companies, like the British East India, the Hudson Bay, the Royal Nigeria and other companies which have done so much to develop the British Empire. I think we may well be proud of the results achieved by that great Empire builder, Cecil Rhodes and his associates.
The story of Northern Rhodesia is really but a repetition of what has taken place in other dependencies. Before the British came there was battle, murder and sudden death; there was poverty and misery. After the British took over the adminis- tration there was peace, prosperity and happiness. And think of the vastness of the dependencies ruled by the British Empire to-day. There is India with over three hundred million in- habitants, Egypt with over twelve million, Ceylon, Nigeria, the West Indies and a host of other territories, the population of which numbers in all over four hundred million souls, and the responsibility of all this has to be borne by the British Empire, for if we were to leave these countries they would fall back into anarchy. There can be no question that at the present time they are incapable of governing themselves.
Lord Roberts told a story of a conversation he once had with a well-known Indian lawyer. He asked this lawyer what would happen supposing the cry of India for the Indians were to be taken literally by the British Government, and they were to leave that country. The Indian lawyer replied, "You know the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta. Suppose you were to open all the cages and went away for a time and then returned, you would find only one animal left, the Bengal tiger. That's what would happen to India." And when Lord Roberts asked who was the Bengal tiger, the reply came, "The Mohammedan from the North."
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Northern Rhodesia; The Evolution of a Dependency
There is a good deal of truth in that and it is a truth one is apt to forget, because there are so many people who cavil at British rule without understanding what it means. But this responsibility, I venture to think, is not ours in England alone. It is yours too. It is an Imperial responsibility, for it was not my ancestors only, but your ancestors just as much, who won these lands for the British Empire, and it seems to me that the responsibility rests on the Anglo-Saxon-Norman races and it is one, I venture to think, which thay have inherited and cannot repudiate without being false to all the best traditions of their glorious past.
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[ December i8th, IQII ]
THE POSITION OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN CANADA
By ARMAND LAVERGNE, M.L.A.
IT seems perhaps paradoxical that I should present the defence of one official language of the country by (with some risk) using the other; but there is method in my madness, and I have accepted the request to speak in English so that I should be able to reach everyone in this audience. I am afraid, of course, that owing to my reputation, what I have to say may hurt some of those present or tread upon some prejudices, but I hope to be forgiven in advance. I have come here to express frankly my ideas and opinions, as I understand that to be the object of a Canadian club; and also because I believe that frankness of expression is one of the surest ways to mutual understanding. And in that understanding we shall have plenty of work in common for the prosperity, the union and harmony of Canada.
My subject presents itself under three aspects. First, what are the rights of the French language in Canada; second, to examine how those rights have been respected and practised; and finally, if bi-lingualism is a danger or a source of strength to our country. Of course one could find the first right of the French language in any country or any language in natural law — the right of a man to speak the language taught him by his mother. But in this country the position is different. I have referred back to the treaties of 1759, 1760 and 1763, the Treaty of Paris, and I find no grounds there for the legal right to the use of the French language in Canada. But after the conquest, as a matter of fact and of necessity, French was used
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The Constitutional History of Canada
was introduced substantially by Richelieu in 1627, and remained practically unchanged until 1854 in a great part of Quebec.
Not only did a Seignior when he succeeded to his estate pay homage to the King or other feudal superior (for subinfeudation was by no means unknown), but when he sold or transferred his seigniory he was obliged to pay a part, usually (at least in theory) a fifth part, of the purchase money to such superior. He also had the glorious privilege of being eligible to be appointed a member of the Superior Council — if the authorities saw fit, — he might also have a commission in the militia — for in time of war all the inhabitants of Canada might be called upon to do service in the army under the Governor or other commander. Very often he did not own his land in the fullest sense — frequently, indeed generally, the Crown reserved mines, minerals, oak-timber and masts for ship-building, such lands as might be required for mili- tary purposes, and the like.
The Seigniors had in theory the right of dispensing justice, but that right was exercised by very few, and very seldom even by them — it did not pay.
The habitant as "censitaire" (tenant, though the words are not quite synonymous) was under many feudal obligations famil- iar to readers of Blackstone — for example, he was bound to take his grain for domestic use to be ground at the Seignior's mill, and to pay a part of such grain, usually one-fourteenth, for such grinding. If he went to another mill, that did not relieve him from paying his Seignior all the same and his punishment might be even greater, for in one judgment it was provided that a habi- tant who took grain to any mill other than his own Seignior's should be liable to have the grain and the vehicle carrying it confiscated by the Seignior. If a habitant, being the feudal in- ferior, desired to dispose of the land which he held, he was obliged to pay a substantial part — in theory, one-twelfth — of the purchase money to the Seignior; and worse, the Seignior might himself, in order to prevent being defrauded, take the land within forty days of the sale. He was liable to the corvee, or forced labor, for his Seignior, as in France; he must give the Seignior one fish out of every eleven of those caught in seigniorial waters; wood and stone might be taken from his land by the Seignior to
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The Constitutional History of Canada
build or repair manor-house, church or mill. Some few Seigniors had also a seignorial oven, to which the habitant must go with his baking.
But while the peasants had no part in the government of the country, and were inferiors, their lot was immensely superior to that of their brethren in the old land, as they themselves were essentially superior to the peasants of old France in intelligence and manners.
The Seignior's lot might not be thought a very happy one — removed as he was thousands of miles away from Paris and seldom with one of his own rank with whom to associate.
But they all loved Canada — "0! Canada, mon pays, mes amours" — as their descendants do still — and no one can under- stand the depth of that devotion who has not mingled with "les Canadiens."
They were free, bold and adventurous, frugal, industrious and moral; and made the very best soldiers for the kind of coun- try in which they were called upon to fight.
Next to, if not indeed sometimes above the Seignior, was the cure" — sometimes the only one in a seigniory except (or possibly not even excepting) the Seignior who could read and write. The essentially religious character of the French-Canadian is seen in the high place the cure" held in his regard — a place which is little lower now than it was a century and a half ago. Indeed it has been said that the Canadian cure exercised in Canada the power in France of the King, the noble and the priest.
But neither priest nor peasant had any part in making the laws by which they both were governed; their government was arbitrary and military; they were accustomed to obey their superiors — and anything more unlike a constitution in our latter day sense than was the mode of government of that happy and fearless people it would be hard to find.
In 1759 Quebec was taken by Wolfe, and the first period of Canadian Constitutional history came to an end. All Canada in 1760 was under the power of Britain, and the military com- manders in the army of the conquerors governed the land as a conquered country. But the religion of the Canadians was not interfered with. Catholics as they were, and their conquerors belonging to a Protestant nation, their law based upon the Civil Law of Rome was administered by a conqueror whose law was
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The Position of the French Language in Canada
that schools can be regarded as national, which are opposed to the belief of 40 per cent, of the population and to the language of 30 per cent. If there is a British principle it is that it goes against the non-sectarian schools, a principle not recognized in England and with but one object — to cut off the child from the faith of its father and the language of its mother. What would be the consequence if Quebec were to retaliate and treat the minority in this Province as the French minorities are treated in the other Provinces? I say it would be an injustice, and al- though I am supposed to be an extremist, as long as I had a voice left I would raise it against such an injustice to the minority in Quebec. If such a thing were done in Quebec, "Ulster would fight, and/' I think, " Ulster would be right."
The second class of grievances suffered by the French lan- guage in this country is perhaps not so serious, but still of a humiliating nature. They are of two classes, those they have suffered at the hands of the officials of this country and those which without being actually official are semi-official. Although by the letter of the constitution of this country the two languages in the Acts of the Dominion Parliament and in the different Departments at the Federal House should be equal, you will find everywhere that a knowledge of English is required of French Canadians, but you will never find that a knowledge of French is demanded from the English people. In fact, many of the Departments ignore the use of the French language. For instance, you will find the Customs House ignores French entirely. In the Province of Quebec, in districts which are entirely composed of French Canadians, in the Post Office Department you will find it very hard, not to say impossible, to get a receipt from the officials in the language used by the whole people of the district. I could quote many similar grievances but will not take time to enumerate them all.
Then there are those which are semi-official, which do not come from the Government but come from public utilities subsidized by the Government which, in this Province especially, take three-fourths of their revenue from the French speaking population and yet ignore totally the official language of this Province. To remedy this, I proposed a Bill in the Quebec Legislature which I was told would create a revolution. I was told by people who should know better that it was based on
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The Position of the French Language in Canada
fanaticism. But the Lavergne Bill was passed and I have not heard of any revolution or civil war between the French and English on its account. I was told that the great companies would be ruined on account of the additional expense of printing in both languages in this Province their official documents to the public. But the law has been carried out so far and I have not heard that the C.P.R. or Grand Trunk have been ruined by it. On the contrary the C.P.R. was the first to acknowledge the justice of that law, which was called forth by petitions signed by 600,000 Canadians of both languages in this and other Provinces, at its head being the name of the Lord Bishop of Quebec. In fact, the principle of the law was already on our statute and I find it in the Railway Act passed by the Federal Government, at Clauses 243, 271, 312 and 394. The Lavergne Law was merely carrying to its logical conclusion the principle admitted by the Statutes of Quebec. A similar law exists in other countries, such as Belgium and Switzerland, and also in other British Colonies. In fact, in Egypt the official stamps of the Government are in both languages. And further in that new sister colony of the Empire, the South African Dominion, where so shortly since war was raging, three years ago the Boers were granted the privilege of having their official language recog- nized in Parliament, and the official stamps and bills issued by the Government in both languages — privileges denied the French Canadians after 150 years of common life, fighting and work for this country. I have been told by a great Canadian that this was the policy of a little Canadian. It may be so, and it may sound a detail; but why should a Canadian object that even a postage stamp going round the world should carry the message that in this Dominion of ours, it is officially stamped that each race recognizes the rights and privileges of the other; and thus carry throughout the world the message of Canadian unity and patriotism?
I understand to a certain extent the sentiment of those who think it would be better to have only one language in this country. I would not say that I share that view, but I under- stand and respect it. But did it ever strike you that the French population of this country might have similar ideas? I have been told that there is in this country a school which says that Canada must be English even at the cost of ceasing to be British.
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Development of the Postal Service in Canada
land, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the great west came in, and we had to provide postal service for the great lone land. Some years ago there were barely ten post offices in the west, while to-day you will find ten thousand post offices west of Lake Superior. In 1863 the postal distance covered by the mail car- riers of Canada was 13,267,000 miles. Last year we carried the mails for a distance of 46,773,527 miles — a significant proof of the advancement of Canada during the past twenty-five years.
The two distinguishing facts in the history of Canadian Post Office service since 1867 are, first, the adhesion of Canada to the Postal Union in 1878 and, second, the adoption of the Imperial Penny Postage in 1898. The Postal Union is a great institution in which Canada takes a leading part. Through ,its work your letters can be sent over the whole world for five cents, and there are men here who remember when they had to pay as much as five dollars for a letter. To-day they go all over Europe for five cents and to England for two cents. Formerly a letter to Aus- tralia, Africa or India would take sixteen cents, and to the Spanish Republic in South America forty cents. To-day stick a five-cent stamp on an envelope and you can reach the limits of the world, and this is the result of Canada's adhesion to the Postal Union. And thanks to the Imperial Penny Postage, for two cents you can send letters all over Canada, to Australia or New Zealand.
And now for the intellectual preference. A few years ago the Canadian mails were flooded with trashy literature from the United States. Their yellow literature filled the mining camps, and during a visit to Cobalt I was struck with the perversity of some of the literature read by some of the miners and their fami- lies. I returned to Ottawa and said to some of my colleagues that if it were possible I would try to revise the Postal Treaty between Washington and Ottawa. We raised the rate from one to four cents a pound against the American magazines and, at the same time, thanks to the action of the British Postmaster- General, we reduced the rates on British magazines and news- papers from eight to two cents a pound. The results of that policy have been gratifying. Where formerly there were very few bags or baskets of British literature on mail day at Rimouski, we now receive seven to eight hundred per cent. more. While I would not encourage magazines and newspapers more than books,
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Development of the Postal Service in Canada
we must not forget that the great organs of contemporary thought and the faithful reflections of the daily life of a country are its mag- azines and newspapers. This is shown by the fact -that during the last British elections several of the leading Canadian news- papers sent representatives over, so as to secure unbiassed new§ for Canada, news not tainted by the American Press Association.
This brings me to the question of cable rates. In France, Japan, Great Britain and other countries the Postmaster-General is the Minister of all communications, letters, telegrams, tele- phones and cables, and I claim that we should have the same system in Canada.
A few days ago we learnt with pleasure that our efforts had been successful in Great Britain and that the rates on cablegrams had been reduced on non-urgent cables by one-half. But this is only a first instalment — we must have cheaper cable rates. If cheaper rates in postage helped to forge the bonds of Empire, I claim that cheaper telegraphic rates will forge perhaps even stronger bonds, and therefore I consider that the last reduction on cable rates is not sufficient. We need another Rowland Hill to fight red tape and fight the British Post Office clerks who are opposed to that measure — then we shall secure cheaper cable rates; or what is still better, a Government-owned cable between Canada and Great Britain on the Atlantic as we now have Can- ada connecting with the other side of the Pacific. With this achieved we shall be able to get more authentic news of all events within the Empire, and thus secure a more live interest in its affairs.
The Position of the French Language in Canada
give the French Canadian a chance to develop his ideas and language and have his own schools in the Western territories, you may be assured that they will remain British for all time to come. Suppose the words of Lord Durham or D'Alton McCarthy had been carried into effect, and the French Anglicized and made one people by language and custom and tradition, would you remember that there are in New England alone in the United States a million and a half French Canadians? If they had been Anglicized they would have become Americans. But keeping their language and customs and traditions they are still French Canadians, the outpost and vanguard of the French nationality in the great southern Republic. Surely this argu- ment should appeal to those who do not want this country to become a mere copy of the States, and it seems to me that it is the duty of the English Canadians in- this country to help us to maintain that language which surely is no dishonor to this country, which is the language of diplomacy throughout Europe. It seems to me the duty of our English-speaking compatriots to help us to maintain this language; and it is their duty — or otherwise it would seem that the 150 years of common life, 150 years of common efforts to develop this country, would mean nothing; 150 years of battle fought together hand in hand, where French and English blood flowed together for the maintenance of British institutions in this country, would mean nothing. On the other hand persecution never brought any good, and more than that, it would be seething the kid in its mother's milk. If we want this country to develop, we must cease talking of these questions which tend to inflame racial and national prejudices. And you must admit the fact that this Confederation was founded on compromise by our forefathers, and we are going to stand by the spirit of those who founded this great Dominion. Anyway it is too late. French we are in language, and French we are going to remain. In this you may think I am expressing my feelings somewhat violently, but I will use the words of a man, not a French Canadian, who is not worse than the Nationalists but a representative in this country of the British Crown, the Duke of Connaught. What were his first words when he des- cended upon the soil of Quebec? "In England it has been the fusion of the Anglo-Saxon and the French races which has made prosperity. In Canada it will be the union of the Anglo-Saxon
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The Position of the French Language in Canada
and the French race which will make the prosperity of the Dominion. " That is all we ask, or rather we want no fusion, but union; and when we have that, we know that this country of British institutions will be safe.
It seems that Nature has given us a living and natural exam- ple of the destiny of our country. At the very doors of Montreal there is a great river which divides Quebec from Ontario, and if you go down that river by boat you will see there the waters of the Ottawa River showing dark for miles and miles flowing along- side the green waters of the St. Lawrence without mingling, but both floating together to a common end. Is not that the image of our country, that the two races should go on together without interfering with one another, but helping one another to carry out the great destinies of our country?
One last argument. I have been told and want to believe that there exists a principle known the world over, which can carry its weight the world over — the principle of British fair play. Is it to be known that this principle applies everywhere in the world except in Canada? Your answer to this question should be no, it applies in this country first of all. If you then try to make this language disappear as an official language you will harm your country, and deprive it of one of its best forces of good. And if you are going to attempt to do such a thing, why not blot out from your coat-of-arms the principle which is ours as well as yours, "Dieu et mon droit" .
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The Constitutional History of Canada
have risen to 77,000 — and there was reasonable harmony and good-will. In Lower Canada, English and French-Canadians continued to quarrel till the War of 1812 brought about at least an external peace. And everybody knows how the French-Cana- dians fought during the War of 1812 — not so many perhaps know how the Upper Canadians fought.
But in both Canadas, the curse of an appointed and irrespon- sible executive became more apparent as time went on, riches increased and affairs became more complex — benevolent despot- ism does not answer for any but the simplest communities.
In the Upper Province, the Executive Council became an oligarchy, nominated by the Governor from among public officers, judges, bishops, members of the Legislative Council, etc. These were a privileged class, monopolized the offices, obtained large grants of land and generally acted as irresponsible favorites of royalty are wont to act.
The Legislative Assembly began to fight against this tyranny to which freemen could not and would not submit; but the place- men long bid defiance to the popular body.
The nominated Legislative Council, too, formed on the model of the House of Lords (but not hereditary) claimed and exercised the right to reject and even to amend money bills — and as the Crown had a permanent civil list, the Legislative, representative, Assembly was helpless.
Fierce conflicts arose, the representative body claiming that the Ministers of the Crown should be responsible to them, but the body of office-holders, who were connected by social ties, common interest, and sometimes family relationship, and who were accordingly called the "Family Compact," resisted all attacks. Rebellion, largely due to the obstinate folly, or worse, of the Governor, broke out at length in 1837, but it was quickly quelled. Canadians were too loyal to permit of the success of a rebellion against the Crown.
In Lower Canada matters had taken even a worse course — the minority who were English in blood and spirit had grown not only in numbers but in influence — most of the Legislative and Executive Councillors were selected by the governors from their ranks. The French-Canadians, loyal as they were, were looked upon still as a conquered people and were "kept in their place" with true British arrogance. The Assembly was naturally almost
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The Constitutional History of Canada
wholly French and Catholic — while the Councils were English and Protestant. The Anglo-Saxon never forgot his dearly prized superiority — his race and language continued to be the very best. When a governor replied to an address from the Assembly in French before speaking English, he was roundly denounced by the English press. His right to speak publicly any language but his own was denied, and the precedence given to the French language was "a base betrayal of British sovereignty" and "would lead to the degradation of the Mother Country." One of the ablest of their advocates went so far as to say, "Lower Canada must be English at the expense, if necessary, of not being British" — language as significant as intelligible.
Most of the troubles, however, were financial. The Assembly made the same claims as its sister Assembly in Upper Canada and with like success — or want of success.
Petitions were sent to the Home Government by the outraged majority, but in vain. The English openly expressed their pur- pose to make Quebec an English colony — and in Lower Canada also a rebellion broke out — and this also was quickly quelled. The two movements were largely independent of each other, although the "Patriots," alias "Rebels," in each Province were in communication with those in the other.
At this stage, the Government at Westminster induced John George Lambton, Lord Durham, to go to Canada and make a thorough investigation into the causes of the troubles and to suggest a remedy. Lord Durham's report is still an inexhaust- ible well of fact from which all future historians, constitutional and otherwise, must draw. His profound sympathy with all efforts toward freedom, his knowledge of the Constitution of the Motherland and his broad human outlook all fitted him for his task. It is not too much to say, that all Canadians and all lovers of constitutional and representative government throughout the British world owe John George Lambton an eternal debt of gratitude.
As the result of his efforts, the Queen's Message in 1839 recommended the Union of Upper and Lower Canada; but the Government got into trouble, and moreover there was much difference of opinion in Parliament. Finally, however, the broad Imperial views of Lord Durham — because Lord Durham was an Imperialist in the sense in which we now use the term — made
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Development of the Postal Service in Canada
by messengers running from north to south throughout France. But again at that period the Post Office was a royal institution, used solely for purposes of the kingdom and the king. It was a replica of that system which we had in Canada under the French regime. In 1734 the first postal route was established in Canada by the French Intendant between Montreal and Quebec. This 1 80 miles of road was covered weekly by his messengers and it was considered the best postal route in North America. I do not know if the route to-day between Montreal and Quebec would be so considered by an automobile party. But I see with pleasure that our friends the Government at Quebec and the enemy at Ottawa are doing their best in the cause of good roads and I hope they will not forget the ancient route between Quebec and Montreal. The means of communication are consid- ered a necessity in our modern era as the growth of commerce and the diffusion of education expands.
In the olden days private posts were permissible. They were started in France by the students of the University of Paris who would travel all over Europe to Italy, Germany and even the darkest Russias and even to Scotland, so that the letters of the French people would go all over Europe, being delivered by these university students. But the kings of France were suspicious and saw danger in that service. They saw veiled treason in those letters, and eventually the postal service was taken over as a state institution. Under that system flourished the famous system of espionage by the Black Cabinet of Louis XV., where the secrets of European statesmen were taken cog- nizance of, and probably the love intrigues of other sovereigns were closely scrutinized, by the courtiers of Louis XVI. To-day the secrecy of correspondence is guarded by every state.
In those days there was not such a thing as prepaid postage. To-day with a penny stamp affixed to a letter you can send it from Halifax to Dawson City and far beyondj but formerly it was different. To-day if you call at an express office with a parcel you ask the express agent how far can the parcel go, and what weight will the company accept. Precisely the same two questions were put to the Post Offices in the olden days; I see some gentlemen here old enough to remember the day when they would call at the old Post Office in Montreal
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Development of the Postal Service in Canada
where these very questions were put — how far can the letter go, and what weight will you take?
Then another question was put — how many enclosures are there in the letter? A letter was denned as a sheet of paper, there were no envelopes then and it was quite a knack to know how to fold the sheet. They always asked how many enclosures, because if there was a second slip of paper, double postage was charged, and if it weighed more than an ounce, you had to pay a fourfold rate.
How were the enclosures detected? Lord Strathcona told me that in the old Post Office on St. Gabriel Street he remembered when the postmaster had always before him a big candle light and each letter posted was held up before that strong light so that the postmaster could see if there was another slip in that letter, and that was the practice in every Post Office. The penalty in those days, even under the benign British Govern- ment, for stealing a letter was nothing less than death; but we have become more humane since the development of postal service in Canada.
The distance in those days fixed the price of a letter. A letter from Ottawa to Aylmer would have brought 8 cents to the postmaster; from Ottawa to Brockville, 74 miles, 12 cents; from Ottawa to Montreal, 18 cents, and Ottawa to Quebec, 24 cents — Quebec has always been knocked! And this was charged for an ounce. For over an ounce, from Ottawa to Mon- treal it was 72 cents, and from Ottawa to poor, rejected Quebec, 96 cents. The longest distance a letter could be carried in those days was from Halifax to Amherstburg, for one ounce this was 72 cents and over an ounce $2.88. I had in my office as Post- master-General a letter addressed from Halifax to Amherstburg paying at that rate, $2.88, and beside it a letter from the same Halifax firm to the same Amherstburg firm sent with a 2 cent stamp — a significant proof of the development of postal service in Canada during fifty years.
The postal rates then were practically prohibitive, so that people tried to find cheaper means by smuggling their letters, and if a man came to Montreal from Quebec he always carried a packet of letters with him from his freinds and mailed them at the Post Office here to be delivered. The steamboats between Montreal and Quebec came in later and the same system was
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own juries in their own courts, and acted in everything in a most arbitrary and intolerant manner. The land was in a state of chaos, and the whole legal machinery paralyzed. The Canadians did not like juries, expressing their wonder that the English should think their property safer in the determination of tailors and shoemakers than in that of their judges. Besides, jury trials cost too much. The English had then the same firm belief in the jury system which characterizes some of their descendants to this day.
Finally, in June, 1774, the Quebec Act passed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster and the fourth period began. Not- withstanding the vigorous protest of the Corporation of London, influenced probably by the English in Quebec, and certainly affecting to act in their interest, "that the Roman Catholic re- ligion, which is known to be idolatrous and bloody" was "estab- lished by this bill"; and notwithstanding that the King was reminded by them that his family had been called to the throne in consequence of the exclusion of the Roman Catholic ancient branch of the Stewart line (and he was solemnly told that the failure to provide in civil cases for jury trials, "that wonderful effort of human reason," was a breach of the promises made to British immigrants, and violated His Majesty's promises in his Proclamation of 1763), George III. signed the Bill, and it became law, 14 Geo. III., c. 83.
This Act defined the Province of Quebec as containing all the territory now the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario and the "hinterland" of the English Colonies to the south, down the Mississippi to Louisiana. The Proclamation of 1763 was an- nulled, Roman Catholics were permitted to enjoy the free exercise of their religion and their clergy to receive their accustomed dues — all matters of property and civil rights were to be decided accord- ing to the laws of Canada, but the criminal law of England was to continue. A council appointed by the King was provided for which should legislate for the Colony, and there was to be an Executive Council of five as a Privy Council — the scheme for a representative and elective Assembly contained in the proclama- tion of 1763 was not continued in the statute, — the statute, notwithstanding Fox's protest, declaring it "inexpedient to call an Assembly." The fact is that it was not thought safe to trust power to a Roman Catholic legislature. Some American writers,
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who are suspicious of everything done by the British King and his administration at or near the times we are now considering, think, or affect to think, that the Quebec Act, passed, as it cer- tainly was, to pacify the French-Canadians, had in view a possible defection of Canada from Great Britain to her discontented Colonies. I know of nothing to justify that suspicion; — "a jaun- diced eye always sees yellow" — there is nowhere any sentiment expressed by the Canadians of anything other than fervent de- votion to the Crown — the like sentiment characterizes them to-day — and it is hard to see how a French-Canadian Catholic could imagine his lot would be bettered by joining with the peo- ple of New England, the hated Bastonnais, his hereditary foes. We know that both pulpit and Congress expressed the greatest alarm at the tolerance of popery, that "blood-thirsty, idolatrous and hypocritical creed," and loudly denounced this betrayal of Protestant principle.
It is a fact not noticed by many people that the nation which boasts, and rightly boasts, that it has no established church, but that all creeds are equally recognized in the United States, began its career by protesting against allowing the French-Canadians to use their own religion in Quebec, that "blood-thirsty, idolatrous and hypocritical creed."
Notwithstanding the address of the Continental Congress of 1774, rilled with philosophy and appeals to Beccaria and Mon- tesquieu, which was signed by Henry Middleton, President, translated into French and printed in that language in Philadel- phia, and then generally distributed among the Canadians, they remained loyal to the British Crown — Sir Guy Carleton "pursu- ing the exact reverse in every particular of the infatuated policy which alienated and lost to the Empire the thirteen Colonies." There can be little, if any, doubt, that it was the Quebec Act which reconciled Canadians to British rule and so played no small part in assuring the loyalty of Canada to the Empire.
The first Legislative Council under the new system met in August, 1775, the Act coming into force May 1st of the same year.
The inhabitants of what is now called Quebec remained in great part French; and as to those in that part of Canada there was little trouble arising from the provisions of the Quebec Act. The English remained discontented for a time with the change
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all parts of Upper and Lower Canada. The couriers followed the immigrants up the Ottawa River as far as Hull and along Lake Erie to Amherstburg and along the border to the Eastern Townships by the St. Lawrence; thence the couriers would follow the trail to Montreal or Quebec, generally stopping at Senator Casgrain's home at Kamouraska, and it is related by historians that they generally had a pretty good time with the habitants there. They would go to the Baie de Chaleur and receive Gasp6 mail once a year and then go as far as Halifax.
In those days there was continual struggle between Great Britain and the Colonial legislators. One great grievance was the fact that the Deputy Postmaster of Canada would receive the postal tax and send it over to the Mother Country. There was a long struggle between the British Post Office and the Col- onial Legislature as to whether the postal charges were a tax or not, because if they were a tax, this was a distinct violation of the Postal Act of 1791.
Coming back to Franklin — one of those statesmen well de- picted by Tallyrand as a man who could deceive without lying and lie without deceiving — he was our first Postmaster-General and acted as agent for the Colonies before the War of Indepen- dence. He appeared before the Bar at the Imperial House of Commons as agent for the Colonies and argued in favor of that principle of no taxation without representation. He was re- minded by the British Parliamentarians that he himself had been a postmaster and had gathered taxes in the Colonies and had never claimed that it was a tax, or that his principle that no taxation without representation should prevail. But he was cute and re- plied that the postal charges were not a tax but in the nature of compensation for services rendered. This was a specious argu- ment and served well against Canada for twenty-five years, be- cause the British Post Office only relinquished the postal tax to Canada in 1850 or 1851. After this each Colonial Legislature in Canada had its own Postmaster-General and Postal Department, while an interchange was arranged between the various Colonies and also between Halifax and Great Britain. The first important duty oi the various Colonial governments was to give the people in this country a reduction in postage. It could not be given to the same extent as in Great Britain, because of the great distances and scattered population. But it was reduced to 3d. for a half
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ounce, the penny postage only following in 1899. The first Can- adian stamp, the old beaver stamp, saw the light of day in 1851, and a few years ago the Post Office Department paid $1,400 for one of these stamps. A short time ago Sir William Mulock promised the late King Edward a complete set of these stamps and Mulock had to pay $1,400 for one of them — fancy an Ontario public man paying $1,400 for a penny stamp!
An event of far-reaching importance in our modern post-office system was the building of the Grand Trunk. Formerly it took a letter ten days to travel from Quebec to Windsor, Ont., while after the railroad it took forty-eight hours. It was a tremendous change. In the fifties the first attempt was made by Canada to establish an ocean mail service to Great Britain. In 1859 Sid- ney Smith, formerly Postmaster-General of Canada, succeeded in making an arrangement between the various European gov- ernments and the United States Government to establish a weekly service between Great Britain and Canada. The service was called a through service from Paris to New Orleans. There was no cable then and the telegrams were mailed at Liverpool, taken over to this continent and delivered at Riviere du Loup, from whence they were forwarded. We had a weekly service between Canada and Great Britain and even then had a record for fast mail service between America and Europe. Trains were equipped on both sides of the Atlantic, while we had the Grand Trunk as far as Riviere du Loup. As soon as the telegrams reached there they were put on the wires as far as New Orleans, while the Grand Trunk took the mails, so that fifty years ago the prospects of Canada capturing the supremacy of the Atlantic looked very fair. But many disasters overtook the steamers. Seven of them were wrecked, and the confidence of the public in the Canadian route was shaken for many years. I am glad to say that, thanks to the work of various administrations and to the broad patriotism of the citizens of Montreal — and in this I pay my respects and compliments to the present Harbor Com- missioners— and thanks to the work of such men as Tarte, Pre- fontaine and Brodeur, which is now being carried on by Mr. Hazen, Montreal is now an ocean port and a successful rival to New York, Portland and Boston.
The scope of the Canadian Post Office has been singularly enlarged since 1867. The various Provinces, Prince Edward
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land, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the great west came in, and we had to provide postal service for the great lone land. Some years ago there were barely ten post offices in the west, while to-day you will find ten thousand post offices west of Lake Superior. In 1863 the postal distance covered by the mail car- riers of Canada was 13,267,000 miles. Last year we carried the mails for a distance of 46,773,527 miles — a significant proof of the advancement of Canada during the past twenty-five years.
The two distinguishing facts in the history of Canadian Post Office service since 1867 are, first, the adhesion of Canada to the Postal Union in 1878 and, second, the adoption of the Imperial Penny Postage in 1898. The Postal Union is a great institution in which Canada takes a leading part. Through its work your letters can be sent over the whole world for five cents, and there are men here who remember when they had to pay as much as five dollars for a letter. To-day they go all over Europe for five cents and to England for two cents. Formerly a letter to Aus- tralia, Africa or India would take sixteen cents, and to the Spanish Republic in South America forty cents. To-day stick a five-cent stamp on an envelope and you can reach the limits of the world, and this is the result of Canada's adhesion to the Postal Union. And thanks to the Imperial Penny Postage, for two cents you can send letters all over Canada, to Australia or New Zealand.
And now for the intellectual preference. A few years ago the Canadian mails were flooded with trashy literature from the United "States. Their yellow literature filled the mining camps, and during a visit to Cobalt I was struck with the perversity of some of the literature read by some of the miners and their fami- lies. I returned to Ottawa and said to some of my colleagues that if it were possible I would try to revise the Postal Treaty between Washington and Ottawa. We raised the rate from one to four cents a pound against the American magazines and, at the same time, thanks to the action of the British Postmaster- General, we reduced the rates on British magazines and news- papers from eight to two cents a pound. The results of that policy have been gratifying. Where formerly there were very few bags or baskets of British literature on mail day at Rimouski, we now receive seven to eight hundred per cent. more. While I would not encourage magazines and newspapers more than books,
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we must not forget that the great organs of contemporary thought and the faithful reflectionsof the daily life of a country are its mag- azines and newspapers. This is shown by the fact that during the last British elections several of the leading Canadian news- papers sent representatives over, so as to secure unbiassed newt for Canada, news not tainted by the American Press Association. This brings me to the question of cable rates. In France, Japan, Great Britain and other countries the Postmaster-General is the Minister of all communications, letters, telegrams, tele- phones and cables, and I claim that we should have the same system in Canada.
A few days ago we learnt with pleasure that our efforts had been successful in Great Britain and that the rates on cablegrams had been reduced on non-urgent cables by one-half. But this is only a first instalment — we must have cheaper cable rates. If cheaper rates in postage helped to forge the bonds of Empire, I claim that cheaper telegraphic rates will forge perhaps even stronger bonds, and therefore I consider that the last reduction on cable rates is not sufficient. We need another Rowland Hill to fight red tape and fight the British Post Office clerks who are opposed to that measure — then we shall secure cheaper cable rates; or what is still better, a Government-owned cable between Canada and Great Britain on the Atlantic as we now have Can- ada connecting with the other side of the Pacific. With this achieved we shall be able to get more authentic news of all events within the Empire, and thus secure a more live interest in its affairs.
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[ January ijth, 1912 ]
THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF CANADA
By THE HON. W. R. RIDDELL
Justice of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice for Ontario
THE Constitutional History of Canada divides itself natur- ally into seven periods. Before the conquest of Canada by the British in 1759- 60, the government and constitution of our country were much like those of a Province of France — New France was as nearly as possible a transcript in this regard of the old France across the sea.
The King of France was represented by a Governor appointed by the King — usually a noble, who desired to replenish his coffers from the wealth of the new land; he had in Canada much the same powers as the King in France; but had always with him a watchful guardian of the interests of the King and of France, the Intendant — and the Intendant had also very large powers indeed, particularly in respect of finance, police and justice. Then there was a Council, not elected but appointed, who acted as a com- bination of judge, lawyer and administrator — the King, however, could disapprove and thereby nullify any acts of theirs.
There was no such body as a Parliament in the English sense: but the country was governed on feudal principles.
In the country were the nobility — the noblesse — the Seigniors who owned the land (every Canadian noble was a seignior, though some of the seigniors were not nobles); they paid homage to the King or some other feudal superior and had under them the peasants ("habitants" as they called themselves as this term did not, like censitaire, necessarily imply dependence) to whom they leased the land to be held on much the same terms as the lands were held by the peasantry in France. This seigniorial tenure
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was introduced substantially by Richelieu in 1627, and remained practically unchanged until 1854 in a great part of Quebec.
Not only did a Seignior when he succeeded to his estate pay homage to the King or other feudal superior (for subinfeudation was by no means unknown), but when he sold or transferred his seigniory he was obliged to pay a part, usually (at least in theory) a fifth part, of the purchase money to such superior. He also had the glorious privilege of being eligible to be appointed a member of the Superior Council — if the authorities saw fit, — he might also have a commission in the militia — for in time of war all the inhabitants of Canada might be called upon to do service in the army under the Governor or other commander. Very often he did not own his land in the fullest sense — frequently, indeed generally, the Crown reserved mines, minerals, oak-timber and masts for ship-building, such lands as might be required for mili- tary purposes, and the like.
The Seigniors had in theory the right of dispensing justice, but that right was exercised by very few, and very seldom even by them — it did not pay.
The habitant as "censitaire" (tenant, though the words are not quite synonymous) was under many feudal obligations famil- iar to readers of Blackstone — for example, he was bound to take his grain for domestic use to be ground at the Seignior's mill, and to pay a part of such grain, usually one-fourteenth, for such grinding. If he went to another mill, that did not relieve him from paying his Seignior all the same and his punishment might be even greater, for in one judgment it was provided that a habi- tant who took grain to any mill other than his own Seignior's should be liable to have the grain and the vehicle carrying it confiscated by the Seignior. If a habitant, being the feudal in- ferior, desired to dispose of the land which he held, he was obliged to pay a substantial part — in theory, one-twelfth — of the purchase money to the Seignior; and worse, the Seignior might himself, in order to prevent being defrauded, take the land within forty days of the sale. He was liable to the corvee, or forced labor, for his Seignior, as in France; he must give the Seignior one fish out of every eleven of those caught in seigniorial waters; wood and stone might be taken from his land by the Seignior to
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build or repair manor-house, church or mill. Some few Seigniors had also a seignorial oven, to which the habitant must go with his baking.
But while the peasants had no part in the government of the country, and were inferiors, their lot was immensely superior to that of their brethren in the old land, as they themselves were essentially superior to the peasants of old France in intelligence and manners.
The Seignior's lot might not be thought a very happy one — removed as he was thousands of miles away from Paris and seldom with one of his own rank with whom to associate.
But they all loved Canada — "0! Canada, mon pays, mes amours" — as their descendants do still — and no one can under- stand the depth of that devotion who has not mingled with "les Canadiens."
They were free, bold and adventurous, frugal, industrious and moral; and made the very best soldiers for the kind of coun- try in which they were called upon to fight.
Next to, if not indeed sometimes above the Seignior, was the cur6 — sometimes the only one in a seigniory except (or possibly not even excepting) the Seignior who could read and write. The essentially religious character of the French-Canadian is seen in the high place the cur6 held in his regard — a place which is little lower now than it was a century and a half ago. Indeed it has been said that the Canadian cur6 exercised in Canada the power in France of the King, the noble and the priest.
But neither priest nor peasant had any part in making the laws by which they both were governed; their government was arbitrary and military; they were accustomed to obey their superiors — and anything more unlike a constitution in our latter day sense than was the mode of government of that happy and fearless people it would be hard to find.
In 1759 Quebec was taken by Wolfe, and the first period of Canadian Constitutional history came to an end. All Canada in 1760 was under the power of Britain, and the military com- manders in the army of the conquerors governed the land as a conquered country. But the religion of the Canadians was not interfered with. Catholics as they were, and their conquerors belonging to a Protestant nation, their law based upon the Civil Law of Rome was administered by a conqueror whose law was
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based on the Common Law of England. Their French customs were respected and the only strange law imposed on them was the criminal law of England, which was more merciful than their own, which permitted torture, breaking on the wheel and arbi- trary imprisonment.
The definitive treaty between Great Britain and France — the Treaty of Paris signed loth February, 1763, — placed the allegi- ance of Canada beyond any doubt, as by that instrument France ceded her to Great Britain. It was not, however, till October of that year that any change was made in the government of the new country. On the 7th of October, 1763, a royal proclamation was issued establishing in "the extensive and valuable acquisition in America four distinct and separate Governments — Quebec, East Florida, West Florida and Grenada."
(Those of you who have studied botany may have noticed certain plants described as "Canadensis," "Canadense," which are not found in Canada at all. This is explained by the fact that when the botanical terminology was fixed, Canada included practically all the eastern part of the territory bordering on the Mississippi and down as far as Louisiana.)
Quebec, with which alone we are concerned, is defined in the proclamation in such a way as to make it wholly impossible to follow the description; and, indeed, no good end would be achieved could we at all make sure of the precise meaning of the words used. By this royal proclamation, which was the beginning of the third period, the Governor was given power, with the advice and consent of the Council, to summon and call General Assem- blies, and the Governor with the consent of the Council and Rep- resentatives was to make laws for the welfare and good govern- ment of the Colony "as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England." He was also, with the advice of the Council, to erect Courts of Justice to hear and determine all causes "as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England" with right of appeal to the Privy Council at Westminster.'
It will be at once apparent what a tremendous change was intended to be brought about under this proclamation. The Canadian had lived under a feudal system, looking up to and relying upon his Seignior or feudal lord; there was now to be an Assembly of Representatives, though few of the Canadians could have any part in selecting the members: the former civil law
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under which they were born and had lived was to be wholly abolished and the English law introduced (think of the change if the people of Ontario were to be suddenly placed under the law of France or Germany), old customs were to become naught, and all was to be in confusion.
Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas were in fact es- tablished, being Courts of Law and of Equity respectively; and Justices of the Peace were appointed with inferior jurisdiction. It was found to be impossible to apply the English law to the full extent, and much uncertainty prevailed.
Many if not most of the English-speaking inhabitants of Canada came from the English colonies to the south, some too came from England. These, Anglo-Saxon fashion, practically monopolized the control of the country — and they appear to have "run" the Courts as well. The many French-Canadians and the few British-Canadians found it impossible to agree: complaint and counter-complaint were made to the King. An Executive Council was formed, consisting of a group of officials appointed by the Governor. This was not unlike the old regime; and it in, many well-known men of the Canadian noblesse found a place.
The French-Canadians ignored the provisions for an Assem- bly, and it seemed impossible to get them to take any interest in a movement for such a body: it was not thought practicable to institute a representative chamber under such circumstances. Petitions were presented to the Governor signed by the British residents only, asking for a Legislative Assembly; but the Gov- ernor reported to the Home Government that the Canadians had refused to join in the petition. The main if not the only difficulty lay in religion. While the French had been by the Treaty of Paris assured of the free exercise of their religion, it was apparent that no Roman Catholic could be admitted to a British Parlia- mentary body consistently with the principles then professed in reference to the Parliament in the United Kingdom — while it would be absurd to expect that the numerous French-Canadian Catholics would submit to be governed by a handful of Protes- tants, not one-hundredth of their number. The English did not want an Assembly with Roman Catholics in it: the French would not have one without. The English-speaking part of the com- munity, of whom the early governors speak in no very flattering terms, objected even to the French Catholics sitting on their
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own juries in their own courts, and acted in everything in a most arbitrary and intolerant manner. The land was in a state of chaos, and the whole legal machinery paralyzed. The Canadians did not like juries, expressing their wonder that the English should think their property safer in the determination of tailors and shoemakers than in that of their judges. Besides, jury trials cost too much. The English had then the same firm belief in the jury system which characterizes some of their descendants to this day.
Finally, in June, 1774, the Quebec Act passed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster and the fourth period began. Not- withstanding the vigorous protest of the Corporation of London, influenced probably by the English in Quebec, and certainly affecting to act in their interest, "that the Roman Catholic re- ligion, which is known to be idolatrous and bloody" was "estab- lished by this bill"; and notwithstanding that the King was reminded by them that his family had been called to the throne in consequence of the exclusion of the Roman Catholic ancient branch of the Stewart line (and he was solemnly told that the failure to provide in civil cases for jury trials, "that wonderful effort of human reason," was a breach of the promises made to British immigrants, and violated His Majesty's promises in his Proclamation of 1763), George III. signed the Bill, and it became law, 14 Geo. III., c. 83.
This Act defined the Province of Quebec as containing all the territory now the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario and the "hinterland" of the English Colonies to the south, down the Mississippi to Louisiana. The Proclamation of 1763 was an- nulled, Roman Catholics were permitted to enjoy the free exercise of their religion and their clergy to receive their accustomed dues — all matters of property and civil rights were to be decided accord- ing to the laws of Canada, but the criminal law of England was to continue. A council appointed by the King was provided for which should legislate for the Colony, and there was to be an Executive Council of five as a Privy Council — the scheme for a representative and elective Assembly contained in the proclama- tion of 1763 was not continued in the statute, — the statute, notwithstanding Fox's protest, declaring it "inexpedient to call an Assembly." The fact is that it was not thought safe to trust power to a Roman Catholic legislature. Some American writers,
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who are suspicious of everything done by the British King and his administration at or near the times we are now considering, think, or affect to think, that the Quebec Act, passed, as it cer- tainly was, to pacify the French-Canadians, had in view a possible defection of Canada from Great Britain to her discontented Colonies. I know of nothing to justify that suspicion; — "a jaun- diced eye always sees yellow" — there is nowhere any sentiment expressed by the Canadians of anything other than fervent de- votion to the Crown — the like sentiment characterizes them to-day — and it is hard to see how a French-Canadian Catholic could imagine his lot would be bettered by joining with the peo- ple of New England, the hated Bastonnais, his hereditary foes. We know that both pulpit and Congress expressed the greatest alarm at the tolerance of popery, that "blood-thirsty, idolatrous and hypocritical creed," and loudly denounced this betrayal of Protestant principle.
It is a fact not noticed by many people that the nation which boasts, and rightly boasts, that it has no established church, but that all creeds are equally recognized in the United States, began its career by protesting against allowing the French-Canadians to use their own religion in Quebec, that "blood-thirsty, idolatrous and hypocritical creed."
Notwithstanding the address of the Continental Congress of 1774, filled with philosophy and appeals to Beccaria and Mon- tesquieu, which was signed by Henry Middleton, President, translated into French and printed in that language in Philadel- phia, and then generally distributed among the Canadians, they remained loyal to the British Crown — Sir Guy Carleton "pursu- ing the exact reverse in every particular of the infatuated policy which alienated and lost to the Empire the thirteen Colonies." There can be little, if any, doubt, that it was the Quebec Act which reconciled Canadians to British rule and so played no small part in assuring the loyalty of Canada to the Empire.
The first Legislative Council under the new system met in August, 1775, the Act coming into force May 1st of the same year.
The inhabitants of what is now called Quebec remained in great part French; and as to those in that part of Canada there was little trouble arising from the provisions of the Quebec Act. The English remained discontented for a time with the change
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in the law in civil matters, but experience showed that Canadian law, based as it was on the Civil law, did not much inconvenience the English merchant. The English criminal law was not ob- jected to by the Frenchman, — bloody as it was, it was less bar- barous than his own. But the Revolutionary War caused the immigration into the western part of that territory, afterwards Canada West, of a very large number of Loyalists who had left home and property to follow their flag and retain their allegiance. These were accustomed to English law and customs, and fretted under the foreign law to which they were subjected in Canada.
The French law and customs seemed to these vigorous and sturdy Anglo-Saxons absurd and intolerable; and the Protes- tantism of the newcomers was repulsive to the devout Catholic French-Canadians. The United Empire Loyalists had come from the New England States and elsewhere, and had been accustomed to freedom and self-government; they could not tolerate the irresponsible control of an appointed council, and petition after petition made its way to the King claiming relief.
The numbers rapidly increased in this western land, now Ontario, the Queen Province of the Dominion, until about 1790 there were there over 30,000 inhabitants. In Lower Canada, the disputes between the old and the new Canadians, the recent and the ancient subjects of the Crown, had continued. Of the twenty- two members who formed the first Legislative Council, eight indeed were French and Catholic, the oath of supremacy having been graciously waived in their favor; but the English persisted
in their attempt to shew "the d d Frenchmen the difference
between the conquerors and the conquered" — they feared or pretended to fear their loyalty, charged them seini-officially with being "rank rebels"; and in general acted as "patriots" (self- styled) are wont to act.
The home authorities at length acceded to the request of the new colonists in the west; and the well-known Constitutional Act (31 George III., c. 31) was passed by the British Parliament. The Act was promoted by Pitt, and naturally met with strong opposition. Before the bar of the House of Commons there was heard a representative of the English colonists in Quebec: he vigorously protested against any division of the Province, and demanded instead the repeal of the Quebec Act. In the House
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were heard the usual arguments against Roman Catholics being admitted to a share of the government and against the imposition upon free-born Britons of foreign law which determined rights by the agency of judges instead of juries, whose rules were those derived from the Roman law and not from the semi-divine com- mon law of England. The merchants of London having trade relations with Canada also petitioned against it. Fox attacked the Bill as not liberal enough — he thought that Canada should have a constitution consistent with the principles of freedom. He also criticized the provision for the setting aside of lands for the support of the Protestant clergy, and objected to the division of the Colony into two parts of which one would necessarily be almost wholly French, the other English.
All opposition, however, was overborne by Pitt. By this Act, which brought in the fifth period, Canada was divided into two parts, Canada East or Lower Canada, and Canada West or Upper Canada (now Quebec and Ontario). To each were given a Leg- islative Assembly to be elected by the people and an upper house called the Legislative Council, whose members were nominated for life by the Crown. The Crown also appointed all the public officers, including the members of the Executive Council for each Province. The free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was once more guaranteed; and the Crown agreed to set aside one- eighth part of all unallotted Crown lands for the support of a Protestant clergy. Some seem to think it was one-seventh, not one-eighth. But such is not the case: the agreement was to set aside one section for every seven sections granted to others. The home authorities also reserved the right to levy duties for the regulation of navigation and commerce.
The object of this Act is described by Lord Granville to be to "assimilate the Constitution of Canada to that of Great Brit- ain as nearly as the difference arising from the manners of the and from the present situation of the Province will admit."
In Upper Canada the first Provincial Parliament met in a rough frame house at Newark (now Niagara) in 1792: and from that time onward the flood of legislation has never failed. Courts were established, the laws of England introduced, new laws made. The Colony rapidly increased in population and wealth — in twenty years the population of Upper Canada was estimated to
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have risen to 77,000 — and there was reasonable harmony and good-will. In Lower Canada, English and French-Canadians continued to quarrel till the War of 1812 brought about at least an external peace. And everybody knows how the French-Cana- dians fought during the War of 1812 — not so many perhaps know how the Upper Canadians fought.
But in both Canadas, the curse of an appointed and irrespon- sible executive became more apparent as time went on, riches increased and affairs became more complex — benevolent despot- ism does not answer for any but the simplest communities.
In the Upper Province, the Executive Council became an oligarchy, nominated by the Governor from among public officers, judges, bishops, members of the Legislative Council, etc. These were a privileged class, monopolized the offices, obtained large grants of land and generally acted as irresponsible favorites of royalty are wont to act.
The Legislative Assembly began to fight against this tyranny to which freemen could not and would not submit; but the place- men long bid defiance to the popular body.
The nominated Legislativ-e Council, too, formed on the model of the House of Lords (but not hereditary) claimed and exercised the right to reject and even to amend money bills — and as the Crown had a permanent civil list, the Legislative, representative, Assembly was helpless.
Fierce conflicts arose, the representative body claiming that the Ministers of the Crown should be responsible to them, but the body of office-holders, who were connected by social ties, common interest, and sometimes family relationship, and who were accordingly called the "Family Compact," resisted all attacks. Rebellion, largely due to the obstinate folly, or worse, of the Governor, broke out at length in 1837, but it was quickly quelled. Canadians were too loyal to permit of the success of a rebellion against the Crown.
In Lower Canada matters had taken even a worse course — the minority who were English in blood and spirit had grown not only in numbers but in influence — most of the Legislative and Executive Councillors were selected by the governors from their ranks. The French-Canadians, loyal as they were, were looked upon still as a conquered people and were "kept in their place" with true British arrogance. The Assembly was naturally almost
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wholly French and Catholic — while the Councils were English and Protestant. The Anglo-Saxon never forgot his dearly prized superiority — his race and language continued to be the very best. When a governor replied to an address from the Assembly in French before speaking English, he was roundly denounced by the English press. His right to speak publicly any language but his own was denied, and the precedence given to the French language was "a base betrayal of British sovereignty" and "would lead to the degradation of the Mother Country." One of the ablest of their advocates went so far as to say, "Lower Canada must be English at the expense, if necessary, of not being British" — language as significant as intelligible.
Most of the troubles, however, were financial. The Assembly made the same claims as its sister Assembly in Upper Canada and with like success — or want of success.
Petitions were sent to the Home Government by the outraged majority, but in vain. The English openly expressed their pur- pose to make Quebec an English colony — and in Lower Canada also a rebellion broke out — and this also was quickly quelled. The two movements were largely independent of each other, although the "Patriots," alias "Rebels," in each Province were in communication with those in the other.
At this stage, the Government at Westminster induced John George Lambton, Lord Durham, to go to Canada and make a thorough investigation into the causes of the troubles and to suggest a remedy. Lord Durham's report is still an inexhaust- ible well of fact from which all future historians, constitutional and otherwise, must draw. His profound sympathy with all efforts toward freedom, his knowledge of the Constitution of the Motherland and his broad human outlook all fitted him for his task. It is not too much to say, that all Canadians and all lovers of constitutional and representative government throughout the British world owe John George Lambtcn an eternal debt of gratitude.
As the result of his efforts, the Queen's Message in 1839 recommended the Union of Upper and Lower Canada; but the Government got into trouble, and moreover there was much difference of opinion in Parliament. Finally, however, the broad Imperial views of Lord Durham — because Lord Durham was an Imperialist in the sense in which we now use the term — made
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their impression upon Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, and in 1840 the Union Bill drafted by Sir James Stuart was introduced into the House of Commons by Lord John. It was passed without much change or opposition, receiving the Royal assent July 23, 1840, and came into force in February, 1841 (3 & 4 Vic., c. 35): and thus began the sixth period.
The main characteristic of the constitution given by this Act is that responsible government was now at length granted — Her Majesty's government in Canada was responsible to the people of Canada and not to the Home authorities. Before this, while legislative powers were given to the Provinces, responsible gov- ernment was withheld — and the only remedy the people had when their grievances grew acute, was to refuse supply.
By the Union Act, however, much was to be changed. The two Provinces became the Province of Canada, for which a Leg- islative Assembly was to be elected with forty-two members from each section. A Legislative Council was to be nominated by the Governor, not less in number than twenty, increased from time to time as should be thought fit, the Councillors to hold office for life. The Council was to be presided over by a Speaker appointed by the Government, the Assembly elected their own Speaker. All written and printed documents referring to the election of members, summoning and proroguing of the Legis- lature and proceedings of either House, were to be in English alone. The laws in force in either section of Canada were to continue in force until repealed or amended; and courts con- tinued, etc., etc. The territorial and other hereditary revenues of the Crown were surrendered for a fixed sum — and it may be said in general that the new constitution was as exact a copy of that of the United Kingdom as circumstances would allow. Lord Durham wrote that it was not "possible to secure harmony in any other way than by administering the government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain," and while he would not "impair a single prerogative of the Crown," and he believed "that the interests of the people of these Provinces require the protection of prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised," still "the Crown must submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions."
The population of Lower Canada was at this time about 630,- ooo, while that of Upper Canada was about 470,000. The Lower
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Canadians felt that it was an injustice that they should have no more members than the Upper Province; those in the Upper Province thought that three English-speaking Canadians were worth at least four French-Canadians. The grievance, as we shall see, changed face before many years. The French-Can- adians also felt aggrieved by the proscription of their language. Their complaints were not unnatural — the provisions complained of arose from Lord Durham's views that it was necessary to unite the two races on such terms as that the English would be given the domination. (That sounds very modern, does it not?) He said, "without effecting the change so rapidly or so roughly as to shock the feelings or to trample on the welfare of the existing generation, it must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British Government to establish an English population, with English law and language in this Province, and to trust its gov- ernment to none but a decidedly English legislature."
This object wholly failed of fulfilment, — and I venture to think it will continue to fail of fulfilment, so long as the French- Canadian mother continues to do her part as she has done — the French remained French and their influence in Parliament stead- ily increased. They had been ostracised politically by the first Governor, and the acceptance of a government with a French Canadian at its head by his successor struck the High Tory Duke of Wellington with horror and dismay. The first Legislative Council of twenty-four members contained eight French- Can- adians.
At first the government was conducted on the principle that the French were inferior; but this idea speedily vanished, and before long, prominent French-Canadians became not only members, but in a large measure masters of the administration.
The Home administration had retained the power of veto upon all acts of the Legislature by means of the Governor, an Imperial Officer; and it seemed as time went by almost impos- sible for those in the Colonial Office (or indeed in any of the offices of the Imperial Government) to learn that parliamentary government is the same thing in Canada as in England, and that Canadians, French or English, were much more capable of understanding and deciding what was proper for their country than any Islander in London could be. The intense conserva- tism— I am not using "conservatism" in the political sense at
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all — of the average Home Minister or official may not be con- sidered strange when we see even Gibbon, the learned historian, using such language as this:
"If you begin to improve the constitution you may be driven step by step from the disfranchisement of Old Sarum to the King in Newgate, the Lords voted useless, the Bishops abolished and a House of Commons sans culottes." Old Sarum was, you remember, a field, which had sent members to the House of Commons in early times when it was a city, and continued to do so when there were no persons living there at all. The House of Lords has, indeed, been in our own day at length, next thing to voted useless, and as for the House of Commons, there is no member there now in knee breeches: they are all found with long trousers, and so are "sans culottes" in very fact.
Even greater men (perhaps) were subject to the same horrifying fears, for we may notice the predictions of Robert Southey. He was a poet and a man of great capacity. His poems were collected long ago by Mr. Phillips of "The Times." In 1803 Southey proclaimed that "the Protestant Dissenters will die away. Destroy the test and you kill them." But it was the overthrow of Monarchy which was always in his view. "The more I see, the more I read, and the more I reflect," he writes in 1813, "the more reason there appears to me to fear that our turn of revolution is hastening on." In 1815 he writes: "The foundations of Government are undermined. The props may last during your lifetime and mine, but I cannot conceal from myself a conviction that at no very distant day the whole fabric must fall." In 1 8 16 he writes: "The only remedy (if even that be not too late) is to check the press." In 1820: "There is an infernal spirit abroad, and crushed it must be. The question is whether it will be cut short in its course or suffered to spend itself like a fever. In the latter case we shall go on, through a bloodier revolution than that of France to an iron military Government." In 1823: "The repeal of the Test Act will be demanded, and must be granted. The Dissenters will get into the corporations. (That was at the time it was suggested that a man who did not happen to belong to the Church of England might possibly not be a bad member of Parliament. The idea that a Baptist, a Unitarian, or an Anything-arian, should
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be allowed to buy stock in a joint stock company, was thought to be a terrible thing in those days.) Church property will be attacked in Parliament. Reform in Parliament will be carried; and then— FAREWELL, A LONG FAREWELL, TO ALL OUR GREATNESS." When the Catholic Relief Bill passed he prophesied the results: "The Protestant flag will be struck, the enemy will march in with flying colours, the Irish Church will be despoiled, the Irish Protestants will lose heart, and great numbers will emigrate, flying while they can from the wrath to come." In 1832, it was proposed to pass the Reform Bill — "The direct consequence of Parliamentary reform must be a new disposal of Church property, and an equitable ad- justment with the fund-holders — terms which in both cases mean spoliation." He was disposed to pray that "the cholera morbus may be sent us as a lighter plague than that which we have chosen for ourselves." The King threatens to make Peers! This also was suggested but the other day. "Nothing then remains for us but to wait the course of revolution. I shall not live to see what sort of edifice will be constructed out of the ruins, but I shall go to rest in the sure confidence that God will provide as is best for His Church and people." Later on, in 1838, he writes: "I am not without strong apprehensions that before this year passes away London will have its Three Days." And so forth, and so forth. Robert Southey had not a keen sense of humor.
The Governors in Canada came in conflict from time to time with the Legislatures who claimed all the rights of the British Parliament: but on the whole, the new constitution worked well — and at length the responsibility of the administration to the people's representatives was fully admitted.
The two parts of the Province were of such different laws, manners, etc., that much of the legislation was for one only of the Canadas — and gradually the theory arose that a ministry must command a majority of the members from each part. This produced endless difficulties; and it was the cause of much intrigue and "log-rolling."
The Upper Province rapidly increased in wealth and popula- tion, overtaking and passing the Lower Province by 1850; and many of its public men complained of the provision, formerly favorable to their section, that each part should have the same
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number of representatives. Representation by Population — "Rep. by Pop.," as it was generally called — became a watchword of a whole political party in Upper Canada.
When the Ashburton- Webster Treaty was made in 1842 — the "Ashburton Capitulation," as Lord Palmerston called it — and Maine was thrust like a wedge between Canada and the British Colony to the east without consulting either colony, the atten- tion of all British Americans was called to the necessity of a highway between the divided Colonies; this plan gave way to a scheme for a railway, an Intercolonial Railway; and in 1852 the Governments of Canada and New Brunswick agreed to build a line down the valley of the St. John. But this plan passed from an active stage, the Colonial Minister refused to guarantee the cost. From that time on, however, Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia never wholly lost sight of the project; and various attempts were made to revive it.
These and other matters influenced statesmen of all parties and Provinces to seek a remedy: and the plan of Lord Durham outlined in his Report, for the Confederation of all the British- American Colonies was from time to time made the subject of discussion. He was the first man in a responsible position to recommend the Union of all the British-American Colonies. As early as 1858 a responsible Minister of the Crown in Canada, Mr. (afterwards Sir) A. T. Gait, openly advocated it and moved for the appointment of a committee to ascertain the views of the people of the Lower Provinces and of the Imperial Government. In 1861 Mr. (afterwards Sir) John A. Macdonald (first Prime Minister of Canada), while opposing the principle of Rep. by Pop. in Canada, said the only feasible scheme as a remedy for the evils complained of was a Confederation of all the Provinces. And at length, in 1864, he effected an agreement with his strongest political foe, Mr. George Brown, to secure this object.
Before this time the Colonial Secretary had assured the Governor-General that any Union, partial or complete, sug- gested with the concurrence of the Colonies themselves would be most favourably considered.
The Lower Provinces had tired of the fruitless negotiations looking toward Union with Canada, and had in the session of their respective Parliaments in 1864 authorized the appoint-
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ment of delegates to discuss and if possible to bring about a Union of the Maritime Provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland always stood aloof. A meeting of these delegates had been set for the 1st of September, 1864. The Canadians felt that it would be advis- able to take advantage of this opportunity; and accordingly eight members of the coalition government, of both sides of politics, went to Charlottetown, met the Conference and were asked to and did express their views. The Maritime dele- gates are understood to have come to the conclusion that a Maritime Union was impracticable, but that a union on the larger basis might be effected. In order that the feasibility of such a Confederation might be discussed and considered from every point of view, the Charlottetown Conference was adjourned ; and it was agreed to hold another Conference at Quebec, to be attended by delegates from all the Provinces interested. This Conference met in the Parliament Buildings, Quebec, loth October, 1846, and was attended by delegates from Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island; resolutions were adopted which formed the basis of the British North America Act subsequently passed, which established the Dominion of Canada — the seventh period being the result.
Beyond any question, the American Civil War and the Trent affair of 1861 had much to do with the movement for Union. So also had the anticipated "revocation" of the Reciprocity Treaty, and when this Treaty was in fact abrogated in 1866, its abrogation had no little effect in hastening matters to a con- clusion— but into that I cannot enter at the present stage; it is too complicated and extensive a question.
The Imperial Government expressed their approval of the proposed scheme as soon as it was brought to their notice (with two exceptions of no moment for our present discussion). The United States also expressed approval in general.
Both Houses of Parliament in Canada approved of the scheme in 1865 by large majorities; the New Brunswick Gov- ernment, however, met with defeat at the polls when they ventured on an appeal to the electorate without bringing the question before the Legislature. The Nova Scotia House of Assembly in 1866 gave their adherence to the project by a majority vote of 31 to 19; and in the same year the former
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Government in New Brunswick was returned by a large ma- jority at a new election; this new election had been ordered by the Governor by what some would consider a piece of sharp practice. The whole story certainly makes amusing reading. The House in that Colony also approved the plan by a large majority.
In 1865, and again in 1866, Prince Edward Island by her Legislature had in emphatic terms refused to enter into the proposed Union. Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia sent delegates to England for the necessary legislation by the Imperial Parliament. Prince Edward Island was again invited to join and its representative, the Premier, then in London, was favorably impressed with the terms offered; but on his return home, his government was defeated.
Accordingly the British North America Act (3031 Vic., c. 3) was passed by the Parliament at Westminster in 1867, creating the Dominion of Canada, composed of four Provinces, Ontario (formerly Upper Canada), Quebec (formerly Lower Canada), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. On the 1st of July, 1867, was the first "Dominion Day" celebrated.
It was the common belief then and since that the delegates desired that Canada should be called the "Kingdom of Canada," so as to show our equality with the other "Kingdoms" across the sea. And it was believed at that time by many and is still by some that the United States objected to this title. I do not know of any reason for that belief. At all events, while "King- dom" had been suggested, we were for some reason or other called the "Dominion" of Canada.
In 1869, another offer was made to Prince Edward Island, but this was also refused. Negotiations, however, renewed in 1872, were more successful, — they had got into financial diffi- culties in that little Province, — and the Island joined the Dominion as a Province, 1st July, 1873, the formal Order-in- Council being dated at Windsor, 26th June, 1873.
In the meantime the Dominion had bought out the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870; and out of part of the territory so ac- quired was formed the province of Manitoba by Act of the Dominion Parliament, 33 Vic., c. 3, I2th May, 1870.
In the far west was the island of Vancouver, made a Crown Colony in 1859, but reunited with the mainland in the Colony
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of British Columbia in 1866. In 1870 an arrangement was entered into that this Colony should also join the Dominion upon condition of the construction by Canada of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Union was effected 3Oth July, 1871, by an Order-in-Council at Windsor, i6th May, 1871.
More recently two more Provinces have been formed out of part of the enormous territory of our great west, viz., Alberta and Saskatchewan, constituted by the Acts of the Dominion Parliament, 1905, 4 & 5 Edward VII., c. 3, and c. 42, coming into force 1st September, 1905.
The remainder of the Continental British territory is divided into the Yukon and North West Territories, the districts of Keewatin and Ungava, and Labrador, this last under the care of Newfoundland. Newfoundland had not been officially repre- sented at the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences, but the resolutions of the delegates to the Quebec Conference con- tained a provision that she might enter the proposed Union, and set out the terms upon which she might do so. The British North America Act made provision for such a proceeding; and there were negotiations of a more or less informal kind looking to her coming into the Dominion. In 1868, terms of Union were arranged with the Government of the Island, but that Govern- ment suffered defeat at the polls and the arrangement was not carried out. At least once since that time, representatives from the "Ancient Colony" have come to Ottawa with a view to their country uniting her fortunes with those of the Dominion; but the negotiations proved abortive; and Newfoundland still stands alone.
The Dominion of Canada has thus her nine provinces, all of which have (speaking generally) the same legislative rights and powers. She has a Parliament of two Houses, the House of Commons elected by the people in each Province in proportion to the population, an adjustment being made after each decen- nial census, and a Senate in which each Province has its repre- sentatives to a number fixed by statute, — these are appointed for life by the Crown, i. e., the Government of the day. The Dominion Parliament legislates for the whole Dominion, has full jurisdiction over criminal law, customs tariff, and generally everything which would affect the whole Dominion.
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The Governor-General, appointed by His Majesty, i. e., by the Administration at Westminster, represents the King; but he is guided, as the King is, by the advice of his constitutional advisers.
The Provinces have (except Quebec and Nova Scotia) only one Chamber in their Legislature — Quebec and Nova Scotia have also Legislative Councils appointed for life by the King, i. e., the local Ministry for the time being.
In each Province is a Lieutenant-Governor appointed by the Ottawa Administration for a term of years: he represents the King; and the office of Lieutenant-Governor is the only part of the Provincial Constitution which the Province (speaking generally) cannot amend or alter. The Lieutenant-Governor is the head of society; but like his superior, the Governor- General, he takes no part in politics or legislation.
The legislation of the Provinces is confined to local matters, although these are of enormous importance: all matters of property and civil rights come within the ambit of the juris- diction of the Provinces.
When the Fathers of the American Revolution came to frame a constitution for the new nation, they extracted from the British Constitution and from other sources what they con- ceived to be the true principles of government, and reduced these principles to a written form. The result is a hard and fast limitation of the powers of Executive and Legislature. It is plain, I venture to think, that those who framed the Consti- tution of the United States had not that perfect trust in the wisdom of their people and their descendants of which we so often hear. It seems to me that the document, magnificent as it is, displays not trust in but distrust of the people — doubt as to their use of their freedom. However that may be, it is certain that there are many constitutional limitations which neither government nor people can transgress. Using the word "con- stitution" in the sense in which it is used in the United States, the Constitution of Canada may be described by a parody on the famous chapter on the snakes of Ireland — "There are no snakes in Ireland." Our Constitution is not only in theory but also in fact similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom — and there Parliament can do anything that is not naturally im- possible,— "It is a fundamental principle with English lawyers
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that Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man and a man a woman": and within the limits of subject and area, our Parliament and Legislatures are supreme and have the same authority as the Imperial Parliament itself. The only function of the Courts in this regard is to decide whether the subject legislated upon is within the list of subjects given to the legis- lating body, and to determine the meaning and application of the enactment.
I have in an article in the Canadian Monthly, June, 1910, drawn a comparison between the constitutions of the two countries, and I do not here pursue the enquiry.
Canada is mistress in her own house: Canadians are subjects not of the people of England but of the King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the seas, who is equally the King of the people of England. How often you hear it said that we are subjects of England! we are nothing of the kind: we are subjects of him who is King of Canada, in the same way that he is King of England, and he is equally King of the English as of the Canadians. We pay no tribute to that King but the tribute of love and well deserved loyalty. We, free, happy and prosperous under that King, do not desire to change our allegiance or our condition for any other on earth. The King unites all the British folk together, and is the bond of union of all the English-speaking peoples except those of the Union to the south of us. We British live in amity and harmony together, and we rejoice to think that for more than a hundred years, in spite of troubles neither few nor small, misunderstandings and competition, we have lived with- out war with our separated brethren of the United States. And we rejoice to know that the nations are growing closer together, each country to live out its own life and work out its own destiny, but each confident at all times of the warmest sympathy and most cordial co-operation of the other.
I conclude by pointing out that throughout our whole history, at least from 1792 two facts stand out prominently, two principles have ever been kept in view.
First, our insistence on British connection. Ontario, Upper Canada, was settled to a great extent by United Empire Loyal- ists— with them loyalty was a passion, and it has not been bred out in their descendants. And practically all who came to
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this Province participated in the same feeling. We have steadily resisted the suggestion either to go off by ourselves or to join any other nation in allegiance. What Upper Canada did, so did Lower Canada — the heart of the French-Canadian is loyal and always has been. True, there have been temporary ebullitions, froth has now and again covered the mighty deep and masked its real condition. But then and now the great mass of French-Canadians are as true to British connection as the needle to the pole.
But while we have insisted that the British flag shall be ours, there is another principle we have never lost sight of — we have kept steadfast to this principle in fair weather and in foul, sometimes amidst trouble and misunderstanding, and sometimes even what almost looked like revolt — we have determined to govern ourselves. The Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, Frenchman, who came out to Canada, could not be made to believe that he had left his brains behind him or that he had forgotten how public affairs should be conducted. He did not believe that those who had not come out but had remained behind, knew more than he. And his descendants do not admit and never have admitted that the descendants of those who remained behind are better than the descendants of those who came to Canada. And Canadians of all kinds have confidence that they are able to govern their own land without interfer- ence by any people, British or otherwise. And so we shall remain British, and as British we shall govern ourselves — and we are content.
Note.
Perhaps the following chronology may be of value — or at least interesting: —
1758 First Legislative Assembly in Nova Scotia
1759-60 Conquest of Canada
1760 Military Rule in Canada
1763 Formal Cession of Canada and Royal Proclamation
1769 Prince Edward Island formed into a separate Province, being divided from Nova Scotia
1774 The Quebec Act
1784 First Legislative Assembly in New Brunswick
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1791 Constitutional Act
1792 First Legislative Assembly in Upper Canada and in Lower Canada
1832 Legislative Council formed in New Brunswick 1 83 7-3 8 Rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada 1838 Legislative Council formed in Nova Scotia separate from Executive
1840 Union Act
1841 First Canadian Parliament for United Canada
1848 Responsible government fully recognized in New Brunswick
1848 And in Nova Scotia, having been partially recognized in 1840
1850 Prince Edward Island obtains full responsible govern- ment
1858 British Columbia a Crown Colony
1866 British Columbia and Vancouver Island united as one Colony
1867 British North America Act 1870 Province of Manitoba formed
1870 N. W. Territories organized with a Lieut.-Governor and small nominated Council
1871 British Columbia admitted into Dominion 1873 Prince Edward Island admitted
1876 Manitoba abolished Legislative Council
1888 N. W. Territories receive a Legislative Assembly
1904 Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan formed
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[January 22nd, 1912 ]
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
By PROFESSOR L. E. HORNING
Victoria College, Toronto
ONE day late last November we were all astonished to read in our morning papers that the British warships in the North Sea had cleared their decks for action, in hourly expectation of attack from the German squadron. We all re- member the thrill of excitement which followed Lloyd George's fighting speech at the Mansion House banquet on July 2ist. We read with great care the studied words of Premier Asquith before the House of Commons on July 2yth,and the explanations of Sir Edward Grey on November 2yth were awaited with great and grave interest; and we were all glad when that grave crisis was successfully past. The Morocco peril seems over, but what of this new year, with two great sister nations standing over against one another armed cap-a-pie, distrusting each other's movements, and still ever increasing their armaments?
To understand this crisis properly, or rather the series of crises which have taken place during the past four or five years, we have to run briefly over some of the historical points. The great Colonial Empire, of which we Englishmen are so justly proud, began about 1688, when England, at the head of a con- federation of the nations of Europe, fought against Louis XIV. and thwarted the ambitious plans of the French monarch, through the indomitable pluck of William of Orange. The con- summation of that colonial expansion again found England at the head of a European confederation; and again the enemy was France, under Napoleon I. After such a tremendous struggle, involving millions upon millions of money and lives, the inevitable reaction followed; and Europe and England from 1815 to 1830 suffered the throes of despair, and everything seemed as bad as
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it could be. Then came the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1832, followed by the Reform Bill, and England began a series of con- stitutional developments. The early years of the iQth century saw a wonderful industrial and intellectual progress, with its great Darwinian discoveries, and its wonderful development of commercial activity for England — and England alone.
Throughout the igth century we find England proceeding step by step with a constitutional development that made her the envy of the peoples of Europe, who were all desiring the same things for themselves. Because of this more rapid development in England and the freer growth of these democratic institutions, she became the ideal of all the people of the Continent; and also, what is very important, an object of hatred, silent but very effective, to all the ruling classes, who were striving to retain their old hereditary privileges.
When we come to Germany, we find it hard to group our facts, because of the long period of disunion marring the progress of that country; so that it is necessary to group our facts around the growth of Prussia. Going back to the beginning of Prussia, we find between the Oder and the Elbe a thousand years ago a people fighting for their homes against the hordes of Slavs; even then the soil of Brandenburg was wet with the blood of her sons spent in her defence. This Slavic question still troubles their parliaments; because the Poles, a political party inspired with the desire to recover their nationality, are working along lines which you find even in parts of Canada. The main thi ng to remember in regard to Prussia is, that in 1415 Brandenburgcame under the sway of the Hohenzollerns, and the Duchy of Prussia, carved out of the northeastern part of Germany, came under the same family in 1525. These two great provinces, united by marriage in 1618, formed the real beginning of the present Prus- sia. The growth was marked by the rule of two of the greatest monarchs Europe has seen: Frederick William, the great Elector, from 1640 to 1688, and Frederick the Great of Prussia, from 1740 to 1786, the ideal of all the young men of Germany of that time.
The growth of the nation was marked by a series of wars, and for a century the plains of Brandenburg were wet with the blood of her sons. There was the Thirty Years War between the Catholics and the Protestants, and in the I7th, i8th, and I9th
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centuries Russians, French, Austrians and Prussians fought over these plains. It was no wonder that a people so inured to hard- ship, so set to the sword, so beaten into frugality and trampled into life, should show indomitable pluck, unswerving courage, unyielding strength, characteristics as truly Teuton as English.
The wars of Frederick the Great, the disastrous campaigns in the days of Napoleon which ended in the terrible overthrow of Jena, and the wonderful, Phoenix-like rising under Blucher to the aid of Wellington at Waterloo, were all incentives to the same purpose; giving a gradually growing strength to the idea in the Prussians, of a united Germany that should some day surprise Europe.
Then in the igth Century we find in Germany, as in England, constitutional and educational development and a growth of national feeling that laid the foundation of the present Empire. And when in 1862 Bismarck became the ruling spirit in Prussia, it was only a question of time when all these long deferred hopes and splendid beliefs should find their real consummation. So the wars of 1864 with Denmark, that whirlwind campaign with Austria in 1866, and that terrible campaign with France in 1870-71 but culminated, as it should, in Prussia becoming the head of the German Confederation, and King William being crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles in 1871.
No wonder when Europe saw this great empire, with its mag- nificent organization and unequalled war machine, the nerves of the other nations were unstrung; they have not got over it yet. But I want to emphasize what I believe is quite true, that in spite of the warlike speeches and injudicious boasts of Emperor William, the twentieth of the Hohenzollerns, the fact that that great war machine, an army of unequalled power and splendor, has not for forty years drawn the sword against its neighbors, goes a long way to prove the contention of the Germans that their army is not for conquest, but for defence only. Unlike Great Britain whose oceans are her bulwarks, Germany must have her army — her boundaries are but barbed wire fences separating her from her watchful and ancient enemies east and west, and if she had not that army, and let it be known it was powerful and capable, led by excellent officers, I doubt if the German Empire would exist a year.
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England and Germany
The development of Germany began with seven years of con- solidation of empire along liberal lines, and the war against the Catholic Church. Then between 1878 and 1888 came the change from free trade to a protective system, followed by the rise of the Socialist Party, the development of State socialism, such schemes as state aided insurance against sickness, old age, un- employment, etc. The dropping of the old pilot, Bismarck, marks the opening of the third period of modern German Empire — the development of a colonial policy. Bismarck's fall and the development which followed it have abundantly proven that men may come and go, but a great empire with a great spirit behind it goes on continuously no matter who may be the pilot.
The wonder is that such a nation of idealists and dreamers (that is what worries the Englishman as much as anything else — he is the practical man, but the German is the idealist) could have so suddenly become a great commercial nation. The fact is, the whole thing is a question of schools. England, in spite of the progress of the I9th century, was woefully behind in educa- tion, and when it came to 1900 they woke up to find that the German system with its numerous universities all over the land, the very numerous technical schools of all sorts and descriptions, had provided Germany with a set of skilled captains of industry and a great body of skilled artisans, which has made the brand "Made in Germany" known all over the world for cheapness and excellence. German ships were sailing every sea, with Germans at every port underselling, underbidding, outdoing the slower English trader.
That was not right, thought the Englishman. What business had the German or anyone else disturbing his Empire? He had had undisturbed possession of the commerce of the world by a series of fortunate circumstances, and during the middle of the iQth century had laid hands on every good portion of the earth.
And then came these pesky Germans. They were bound to have colonies because they recognized that that was what had made England's greatness; and they needed colonies to furnish them with markets and a bread supply, because between 1870 and 1900 Germany had changed from a wheat exporting country to an importing country, with sixty-five per cent, of her people depending upon manufacturing industries. She had to
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find markets for these manufactures and import food for the workers.
So when England, with her slower methods, awoke to find this clever, aggressive, well-educated people disputing her rights in every market all over the world, they were naturally a little disgusted; and when people get in that way of feeling, bad words are apt to be said, and from one thing to another that bad feel- ing has grown until to-day we have reached the state of affairs I have referred to.
Lord Rosebery pointed that out in 1900, when in a brilliant speech he said the English must either get better educated or lose their trade. Take the magazines of that time, and over and over again you will find them asking whether England would last out the century. The Germans were not behind hand either. They said in the i6th century Spain dominated Europe; in the iyth, France; in the i8th and I9th, Great Britain, and in the 2Oth, Germany.
In 1907 Balfour repeated Lord Rosebery's warning and a great movement began for the establishment of technical schools; while all over England sprang up newer universities, founded because the older universities of Oxford and Cambridge, with all their splendid history, did not meet modern requirements. We have a new England, once more making great strides forward in the battle of commerce, and I feel quite justified in backing the Englishman yet.
But the worst of the thing was that these troublesome Ger- mans began to build a navy, and they adopted a naval pro- gramme in 1897 and established a Naval League all over the country with twelve thousand or more branches, some in places miles remote from water of any kind. From that time to the present there has been no cessation of this insanity of naval armament. To-day there are five million men under arms in Europe. The united war budgets of the great Powers exceed three hundred million pounds annually. The navies have become an established fact — English, German, American, Canadian — ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam.
Now what arguments had the English to put up for a navy? We are used to them, and they are correct. They say they must have a navy to protect their commerce and the routes by which their food is supplied. The Germans say, "We are building a
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navy, too, to protect our commerce and ships and supply of foodstuffs. Where \s the difference in our argument?"
Everyone knows that England's commerce is greater than Germany's; nor is it necessary to prove that England is deca- dent, as so many like to say. Great Britain is not decadent, neither is Germany, and I think there is room for both on the earth.
In 1881 Great Britain's imports were £397,022,489 and Ger- many's £149,505,000 — England's was nearly three times those of Germany.
In 1910 the imports of Great Britain were £678,480,000, and those of Germany $430,459,000, or about 65 per cent, of those of England.
Then, England's exports in 1881 were £234,000,000 and Ger- many's £152,000,000.
In 1910 the exports were, England £430,000,000 and Ger- many £373,000,000.
During this period England's imports had increased 71 per cent, and Germany's 187 per cent.; England's exports had in- creased 84 per cent, and Germany's 145 per cent. In these 30 years the total foreign trade of Germany had increased from £301,000,000 to £803,000,000, or over 166 per cent. England's total foreign trade had increased from £631,000,000 to £1,109,- 000,000, or just over 75 per cent.
And yet in spite of these instructive figures, which are so much in favor of Germany, some Jingoes have wished to ask this great and progressive nation why she is building a navy, and if she does not give a satisfactory answer they are going to blow her ships out of the water. It might not prove as easy as it looks.
The whole question between England and Germany is one of commercial rivalry, which is a very sane and sound beginning, but there have been a lot of entanglements. In Germany I used to read with great satisfaction of the doings of our late King Edward. He seemed to have wonderful qualities, and developed into one of those great diplomats whom Europe has rarely seen. And it was also very instructive to read in the German papers of all shades of politics the editorials that, whether they willed or no, were influenced by that silent King Edward in the back- ground. "Silent Edward" they called him, because they them- selves had not a silent king.
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And as yet, as the twentieth in that long line of Hohenzollerns, there is no more kingly monarch in Europe than William II. He may be foolish in some of his words, but he works morning and night with the same ideals that Frederick the Great and Fred- erick William had two and three centuries before him — the idea of being a father to his people from an absolutist standpoint — and they are guiding him to incessant work; work for the coun- try and people. I believe that above all men in Germany he is a man of peace. So that unlike as these two monarchs were, they were still working toward the peaceful settlement of diffi- culties. But unfortunately other people got in their work, and I am not so certain that the combinations brought about by the diplomacy of King Edward himself and some of his chief advisers, such as Lord Lansdowne, have been for the good of Europe. Till a few months ago France had been an unfet- tered enemy of England from the early days. In the Fashoda affair it was England against France. England and Russia were never pulling together until after the Japanese war; and then the Bear was willing enough to make peace with the Lion, and to-day they are working together in Persia. I have no sympathy with any such combination as that in Persia. We have nothing in common with the principles and practices of the Russian rulers.
And why should we give up an old friendship with Germany that has lasted since the days of the Reformation until the iQth century? Without England's aid and backing Germany could not have existed through those troublous times of the 1 8th and 1 9th centuries; and old Fritz, that great King and Emperor, owed his salvation to English armies more than once. Protestant Prussia and Protestant England have been friends for more than three centuries. Why should we now turn about, forget that friendship, and join two such hereditary enemies as France and Russia in a combination against this progressive and enlightened nation? — that is a thing which bothers me, and I don't think it is right. With such tremendous powder magazines open and Jingoes in all the lands, there is very apt to be a spark, and when that conflagration takes place, Heaven alone knows how it will end.
Now for the other side. There are three great forces making for peace, and that is why I hope the outcome will be peaceful in spite of all the insanity abroad.
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First of all my hope is in the men of money. England's little ten-mile railway between Stockton and Darlington has become over 600,000 miles of steel bands binding the different nations of the earth together; and they do not care where they run so long as they are doing their office. So with steamships. There were six abroad in 1819 which took twenty-six days to cross the Atlantic. Now we have such vessels as the Mauretania and an immense fleet traveling thousands and millions of miles, with cables, telegraphs and telephones going around this little ball of ours and bringing the nations into one. We cannot help the internationalism this interchange produces, and we do not want to help it.
And all the unthinkable quantity of money invested in these enterprises and means of communication bringing the nations together and making this planet so small that you cannot go to the other side of the earth without meeting old friends — all this immense investment and the increasing sense of moral responsi- bility is going to make it impossible for enlightened and civilized nations to join in warlike purposes.
What more silly than to suppose that by Germany defeating England in war, England's commerce would be destroyed or go ,to Germany? Look at France, beaten on fields of terrific carnage in 1871. She paid Germany that huge war indemnity, girded her loins, and has become a more prosperous country than ever — and when last August she tightened up her purse strings there was a panic at Berlin and so war was avoided.
But it is not only the men of money. In all the nations the influences of education are abroad. I can almost remember when the first Canadian went abroad to finish his education — to-day nearly every ambitious boy dreams of going to Germany to finish his education, because it is the greatest country in the world, the undoubted leader in all departments of science. Take theology, natural science, philosophy, mathematics or what not — if you want to be up to date to-day you must read German newspapers, discuss German theories, know the German people and their opinions and visit their country or you are behind the times.
To-day I am making a special study of the English language. If I depended upon English books and men I should be nowhere — I get ten times the number of books and advanced works on the English language from Germany that I do from England
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herself — and one of the last and best was written by an English- man in English and no one would publish it, so it was published in Germany. Every Canadian, American, Russian, Frenchman who goes to Germany to finish his education at one of the Ger- man institutions becomes a new factor in that great educational force which is doing away with war.
The third great force for peace is in the common man. Men of finance have a wonderful influence, men of education have a great uplifting force, but the common man as we know him to- day, is as never before working forward with new hopes and ideals, and as he gains them war will become more and more impossible.
To-day and to-morrow see the end of the German elections for another five years. You who have followed them will see that they result in the Socialists securing largely increased rep- resentation, and out of the 14,000,000 voters of Germany they have polled some 4,400,000 in support of their candidates. That is, a third of the voters of Germany are voting against high tariff, against huge armaments, and in favor of everything that shall uplift the common man, strengthen the cause of the woman and child, and make life more bearable for the lower classes.
You have heard the phrase over and over again that the 2Oth century belongs to Canada. I think those words are true — much truer and wider in their meaning than Sir Wilfrid Laurier dreamed. It is because Canada is most fortunate in the hour of her destiny that the 2Oth century belongs to her. Before Caesar crossed the Rubicon the centre of the world was the Mediterranean. The circle enlarged until the Atlantic became the centre. To-day read of the events in China and the Orient carefully and you will find that the Pacific must become the centre of the great world dramas. By the victories of 1871 France lost her predominance and Berlin became the centre of European power. But up to the present time, and now more than ever, London is the centre of world power. But when the four hundred millions of Chinese become awakened to their possibilities and opportunities, then the world drama will have another shift, and where will the centre be then?
It is because I believe in the common man above all kings and potentates and powers, because I want to see him educated to the sense of the new responsibilities so rapidly centring upon
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him, because I think these fine plains of our own Canada, with her unequalled climate and resources and opportunities, are to be the highway for that new power, that I believe Canada's cen- tury is come at a most fitting time. Shall we take part in this great movement? Shall we have our proper say in making war to end, in helping to beat the swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and helping on that world federation and parliament of man, when there shall be "Peace on earth, good- will amongst men"?
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[ January 2Qth, 1912 ]
SOME CANADIAN ASSETS AND LIABILITIES
By SIR BYRON EDMUND WALKER
AMIDST the happy optimism which pervades Canada at the moment we often hear the speaker say that the twen- tieth century belongs to Canada. What is true, however, is that Canada belongs to the twentieth century. There is little doubt that for food or ill we shall be shaped in our destiny by the present century. That we are being shaped by any force seems to be forgotten by many Canadians. We know that effects follow causes inevitably, but we think very little regarding the future effect of our own present actions. In thinking about Can- ada, we are sometimes like the sanguine type of borrower when he presents his balance sheet to his banker. He regards the assets with great pride as his own creation and as undoubtedly his own possession, making very light of the liabilities, each of which must, however, be entirely discharged before he is entitled to boast of his accomplishments. Canada is one of the most pre- cious assets in the world. In it we all have certain rights of ownership, but regarding it we also have most serious liabilities. We have in our possession one of the largest countries in the world. In the extent of its sea-coast, its lakes and rivers, its mountains and uplands, its fields and woodlands, and in the bountiful harvests to be gained from all these, it is not excelled by any country. But it has, of course, the defects which are inevitable in its qualities. It is a northern country, and to al- most every scheme of work carried out in Canada there is added the labor and expense caused by the winter, while the loss from the many forces of Nature which in that season have ceased to work for the benefit of man falls upon all of us. We are so far
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north that we do not even possess an Indian corn belt, much less sub-tropical areas where sugar, cotton and tobacco may be grown in large quantities, although we can hope that good sense may some day bring the West Indies into our confederation. But we would not exchange our winter for the suns of any sub-tropical country, and in the character of our natural resources and the strength of the effort necessary to secure them lies the main assurance of our national character.
I need not enumerate to this audience the various sources of wealth in Canada. We all know that Nature has done her part to make us one of the richest nations, and that our chief want is that men of the right sort shall join us in working out our great future. Our future will depend also upon the actions of other nations whose self interests may not accord with our scheme for our future.
The average man thinks that he has enough to do to earn his daily bread without worrying about national affairs. He has doubtless attached himself to one of the political parties and he votes as he is urged to by his political leaders. What more can we expect? Very little more unless it be in great emergencies. But there are thousands of men who get much more out of life than just daily bread, and who think little more about our national future than their less fortunate brothers. These men usually regard themselves as practical people, whatever that may mean, but they are merely one of the many species of fools which the country suffers, gladly or otherwise. I need not, I am sure, hesi- tate to say to this audience that no man who is prospering in Canada has any right not to have in his mind some conception of what we are trying to do together as a nation. The fact that you are members of a club established for the purpose of securing a half-hour occasionally from the whirl of business in which to turn to other matters makes me safe in relying on your sympathy in making such a statement.
Shall we then admit that if we are engaged in laying up money for our children, we are truly foolish not to remember that we should also manage Canada for our children? If we save our money and destroy our country, little thanks will come from our children. Must we not also admit that in the pursuit of wealth we have passed in a few years from a country noticeably moder- ate and reserved, to one of feverish speculation and extravagant
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expenditure in the cost of living? Much of the change is, of course, the inevitable accompaniment of prosperity, but in its worst aspects it is almost as destructive of the fibre of a nation as actual crime. The country that believes only in success as represented by money, without much regard as to how it is made, and which admires people in proportion to their social display, will not survive. I do not believe we shall become that kind of country, but we can all see the danger. A nation must have self-respect and must care for the higher intelligence of life; otherwise, even if very wealthy, it can only become one of the hateful oligarchies which disturb the stream of civilization.
Our future depends even more upon our children than upon ourselves. No forces for civilization are so potent as our uni- versities and schools. The conditions and the aims of our educational systems are improving, but there is very much yet to be done. Universities are springing up in the West, and their school buildings put us in the East to shame; but vast sums must be spent and much experience gained before we can fit our machinery to the task of suitably educating our people. Every earnest Canadian should remember daily how tremendously our future may be affected by the quality of the teaching in our schools.
In the administration of justice, one of the foundations of society, we still follow the good example of England, and if we consider the history of the settlement of our new areas we may take some pride in our record. Let us hope that we shall never see a time when our regard for justice is blunted by the examples of men of wealth escaping the results of wrong-doing by the use of their power. If our conception of justice remains high and the newspapers endeavor to teach our people to work together in reasonable regard for the interests of all, we can by govern- ment commission and by direct legislation escape the evils of so-called trusts, and also of unfair effects from tariff or other taxation. To be just to each other with due regard to the fact that all must make some present sacrifice for our national future should be our great aim.
But if we are to maintain a high sense of justice and to be unselfish where national considerations are concerned, we must improve our standards in other respects. We should encourage in our universities, our Canadian Clubs and elsewhere, such a
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study of political science as will enable us as soon as possible to give our large cities capable and pure government, such as has been very rapidly brought about in the United States in many cases, and will remove from our national politics the mis- chief of patronage and will reform our civil service sufficiently to take it out of politics.
It is often said that our newspapers fairly reflect the people. Frankly, I hope that some of them do not. It has also been said that men will vote in accordance with their pockets. I have always insisted that this is untrue, if men are stirred below the surface. If people are stirred deeply enough their feelings are generally sound, and if newspapers would stop praising one party and reviling the other to such an extent that real argument ceases, and would appeal to the best in people, many features in our politics which should not exist could be reformed.
Consideration of the future of Canada opens out in every direction, but I am nearing the end of my half-hour. I have urged that we should work together for the future of Canada, that in our individual relations, struggling as we all are to improve our positions materially, we should by the exercise of reasonable good will to each other, and with the aid of any possi- ble machinery for the maintenance of justice in such relations, make our lives serviceable to those who will follow us, by building in accordance with our noblest ideals a great nation of right-minded people.
I cannot close without referring to one among the many dangers we are encountering in our journey, one which some- times seems to loom larger than anything else. We are receiving a stream of immigrants greater relatively to the people already in Canada than any other nation has yet had to manage. If this year we receive 400,000 new people that will be the same as if the United States received in one year 4,500,000 new people, so far as the power to assimilate them and to provide for their reception is concerned. Notwithstanding the great wealth in the aggregate brought by them, we shall have to incur two hundred or three hundred million dollars of foreign debt in order to further equip the country to receive them. This money comes from England and such European countries as follow her in investments. Our power to receive these immigrants depends on our credit with England. We enjoy at her hands
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the best credit of any country in the world. Every foolish operation in Canadian finance imperils that credit. This credit is largely based on the belief that there is here in Canada a coun- try destined to be not merely always loyal to the King, but to be a commanding influence in the future of the greatest Empire the world has known. What are we doing to make sure that the newcomers understand our political ambitions? And yet our future may depend on whether they will join us and play the game or not. Who stops to remember that Great Britain gave Canada the western provinces merely on payment of the claim of the Hudson's Bay Company? Did she not do it be- cause she was sure that we would play the game like gentlemen? Play it we shall of course, but in all fairness let us set out before the newcomers what the game is. If we do so the children of the non-British settlers in the west will be as good Canadians as we are. Let both political parties join in saying on every political platform in the west, that we are destined to do our share, and eventually to pay our share, towards the perpetuation of the British Empire forever.
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[ February 5th, 1912 ]
TWO DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF INDEPENDENCE
By J. S. EWART, K.C.
(In order to draw attention to the purpose for which quotations are employed, italics not appearing in the original are sometimes made use of.)
ADVOCACY of Canadian independence would be very much simplified if two difficulties could be got out of the way — difficulties which one would think ought not to exist. One is the confusing vagueness of imperialistic claims; and the other is unfamiliarity with the conception of two inde- pendent kingdoms acknowledging allegiance to the same king.
I desire, in the present address, to do what I can to remove these difficulties. I want, in the first place, to make clear that we have not, as the language of imperialists sometimes gives occasion to think, any proposal with reference to Canada's political future, except independence; that although some years ago imperial fed- eration was held out to us as a possibility, no plan of federation ever was or ever could be produced; that the association formed for the advocacy of federation dissolved; that it was reformed as a federal defence society; that it has abandoned federation al- together, and adopted the nationalistic idea of co-operation; that there is now nothing left but the vaguest and most incoherent of invocations of the spirit of imperialism; and that some of the very best of imperialists are actually looking to nationalism as a necessary prerequisite of the realization of their larger ideals.
I want to prove this, but not merely by my own assertions or arguments. I have recently had a debate in the magazine of the Royal Colonial Institute, United Empire, with two notable im- perialists (Mr. Ellis M. Cook, and Mr. Richard Jebb). I shall read to you as much of that debate as relates to the subject I
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have now in hand, and I shall ask you to judge for yourselves of the validity of my assertion as to the vagueness of imperialistic claims. I shall give you what can be said upon both sides of the subject, and I shall enable you to ascertain for yourselves, in that best of ways, whether imperialists present to us any alternative to independence. Afterwards I shall deal shortly with the second of the difficulties to which I have referred.
But first let me explain why it is that the first of these diffi- culties forms a real obstacle to the acceptance of independence. Attention to the line of nationalistic argument will reveal the reason. It is as follows:
(i). Nationalists and imperialists agree that our present situa- tion is ignoble and insupportable. Splendid Canada in colonial garb — stalwart Jack in baby clothes — is ridiculous and shameful. The chiefs of Canadian imperialism are not a whit less sensitive about humiliation of that sort than I am. Dr. Parkin has said:
" If the greater British colonies are permanently content with their present political status, they are unworthy of the source from which they sprang. " (a)
Professor Leacock has said:
" The colonial status is a worn-out, by-gone thing. The sense and feeling of it has become harmful to us. It limits the ideas, and circumscribes the patriotism of our people. It impairs the mental vigor and narrows the outlook of those who are reared and educated in our midst. " (b)
And Mr. C. A. Magrath whose imperialism, he says, is to him a religion, declared the other day that:
" The existing situation is an impossible one, in that the rep- resentatives of the British Isles may, at any time, plunge the others into difficulties with foreign powers." (c)
(2) Founding ourselves upon this agreed basis, nationalists proceed to the second proposition of the argument. We urge that change ought to proceed along the line of previous evolution, and, in accordance with all previous advancement, by taking another step along the road which Canada has always travelled. One hundred and fifty years of steady, persistent, unswerving progress along that road has brought us to a position of practical independence. Our self-control is only nominally and theoreti-
(o) Imp. Fed., page 12; and see page 31. '&) University Mag., 1907, page 133. Montreal Star, 29 January, 1912.
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cally incomplete. We have our own army, our own navy (or a beginning of it), and our own flag on the jack staff. In foreign affairs, as well as with reference to internal government, our freedom is not only ungrudgingly admitted by the British government and by all British statesmen, but it is proclaimed (as by Mr. Balfour) as "a matter of pride and rejoicing." (a) Any change in our constitutional relationship, I say, ought to be along the line on which our development has always proceeded. Very little attempt to contravene this second proposition in the nationalist argument is made by imperialists. Some Canadians among them do not, indeed, applaud as heartily as they should (and as Mr. Balfour does) the fact that (to use his language):
" The great Dominions beyond the seas are becoming great nations in themselves. " (b)
But whether these men like it or not, the fact is too palpable and too popular for dispute.
(3) The last stage of the argument, or rather the deduction^ from the previous premises is so perfectly inevitable that opposi- tion to it would seem to be impossible. For if our present posi- tion is unbearable; if change ought to proceed along the line of previous development; and if that development has already reached completion from a practical point of view, no one surely can object to the conformity of theory to fact, more especially when, by that simple means, our country would attain the rank and station in the world to which her greatness and her achiev- ments have so amply entitled her. — j
The argument for independence, then, seems to be very simple and very complete. Let us now consider the first of the two difficulties which it encounters.
For some years a large number of persons advocated closer political incorporation of the United Kingdom and Canada in what they called an "imperial federation." The idea was utterly visionary, and perfectly impracticable. Its very name was a contradiction, for the adjective, imperial, connotes a rela- tionship of dominant and subordinate states, while the noun, federation, connotes a relationship of equality. Its supporters, although frequently challenged, never attempted to reduce it to the form of an intelligible plan. And the notion has now been
(a) House of Commons 2ist July, 1910. (6) Ibid.
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definitely abandoned by the only association formed for its advocacy. The Imperial Federation League has become The Imperial Co-operation League. It is on the right line at last. Let me quote, in this connection, the language of a celebrated imperialist — Sir Gilbert Parker:
" With the greater facilities of our modern times and our close touch due to science and swift transportation, parliamentary federation seems further off than it was then. Old federationists like Joseph Howe, and James Service, and Harris Hofmeyer were great dreamers, and they thought they saw in the confederation of the scattered provinces of Canada a formula for the constitu- tional union of provinces still more scattered, with the United Kingdom as a centre. Time and closer analysis of the problem, together with experience, the most valuable of all solvents, have shown that imperial union on the lines of an imperial parliament has difficulties too great, and, in reality, advantages too few to permit of the fulfilment of the great constitutional dream. " (a)
Imperial Federation is finished, but the effect of a very cap- able, very persistent, and very enthusiastic advocacy of it still continues. Former adherents cannot be expected easily to accept independence, when for years they argued in favor of "imperial federation." Some of those persons will always be federationists, and will continue to promise us that some day some marvellous man will arise, who, with clearer vision and stronger sense, will show us that the utterly impracticable has always been perfectly feasible.
Argument against faith in future manifestations and revela- tions, is, of course, futile, and I shall not attempt it. The be- lievers, moreover, have my unfeigned respect. At the root of their faith is strong British sentiment — a sentiment which I would be the last to decry, for it is one which I share. It is a feeling founded upon common ancestry, language, customs, literature and achievements. All that I urge upon these men is that that sentiment would not be outraged, but on the contrary would be augmented and enlarged by another great victory in British constitutionalism; by the happy termination of another long line of developmental activity similar to that which pro- duced the British parliament itself; by the consummation in nationhood of our own political evolution; by Canada's attain- ment of international rank. Sentiment might, conceivably
(a) Can. Ann. Rev., 1910, page 83.
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(but only conceivably), have prevented our abjuration of British control — have inhibited at the outset all desire for self-govern- ment— but it cannot require us to refrain from declaring that we have obtained that for which we have always struggled, and at last won.
I argue, then, not with the adherents of the lost cause, but with those who are as yet uncommitted, and it is with them in mind that I refer to the vagueness of imperialistic claims — to the disinclination of imperialists to define themselves as a diffi- culty in the way of independence.
The difficulty is this. Although there is now, in reality, but ! one proposal before the public with reference to the political future of Canada, imperialists continue to give the impression that there are two. Nationalists, indeed, nag at them, wanting to know what is the other one: but the only reply is "imperialism"; and all that further pressure can produce is either vague language, which may be understood as referring to "imperial federation" (a); or the still more unsatisfactory statement that the imperi- alism advocated is something which cannot properly be described by the word imperialism at all (I shall read that to you); or a declaration of firmest belief that the resources and powers of British statesmanship may be depended upon to make due revelation to us at some appropriate period. Assertions and ap- peals of these kind are, I regret to acknowledge, well calculated to mislead, and keep unsettled, people not familiar with the history of the imperial federation movement, and not aware of the reasons which predetermined its failure. I recognize in this vagueness and uncertainty a real obstacle to the acceptance of independence. I now give you extracts from the debate jj and I have to ask you as I proceed to be forming your own judgments as to the character of imperialistic claims — to ascer- tain whether imperialists offer us any alternative to independence.
Mr. Ellis M. Cook's Article:
"The very first point that strikes us, then, in these pamphlets is that Mr. Ewart himself (in No. l) begins by demonstrating (page 4) that Canada has 'fiscal independence, legislative inde- pendence, and executive independence.' Her complete judicial
(a) As in the address of Mr. C. H. Cahan, K.C., delivered Nov. 2Qth. Printed above, and separately as a pamphlet.
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independence she could secure if she wished. 'From a political standpoint Canada is diplomatically independent.'
"Mr. Ewart goes on to show that this state of affairs is not only recognized but welcomed by the principal leaders of affairs in Britain. Why, then, should Canadians feel any deficiency in their citizenship? Mr. Ewart replies, in effect, because they are still theoretically part of an empire — and empire, 'speaking precisely and politically,' means subjection. Against this theory put the opposite one: that, whatever 'empire' has meant in the -past, it means not subjection but partnership in the future, and that citizenship of an empire is something wider and prouder than citizenship of one isloated country. Why should we limit our conceptions by dictionary definitions or past history?
"Mr. Ewart's quarrel is chiefly with words, and he follows a good imperialist, Mr. Jebb, in suggesting alliance rather than federation, as the end and aim. But whereas Mr. Jebb reads into the word 'alliance' something more than a mere system of agreements between independent kingdoms, Mr. Ewart, unless we are mistaken, reads something less. He grants us the Crown, and does lip service to the Throne, but his insistence on certain nomenclature is in itself suspicious. He objects to the words 'Dominion beyond the seas,' saying, 'We are on this side of the seas.' His king, therefore, must have no distinction between his subjects.
"No. Whatever be the confusion of thought among im- perialists, and however unscientific and lacking in precision may be their terminology, they present to any but the bigoted provincialist, a better creed than that offered by Mr. Ewart."
Mr. Ewart's Article:
"For discussion of the problems involved in the political relationship between the United Kingdom and Canada, the first and most essential requisite (very obviously) is clear conception of what that relationship is. Are the two countries a part of an empire? If so, what sort of an empire is it? Or are they inde- pendent kingdoms? Or are they nominally parts of an empire, and in reality independent kingdoms? One would imagine that this would be the first point for discussion and settlement. To very many imperialists, however (I speak with perfect knowledge), attempt at definition is not only unacceptable but
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irritating, and even thought to be indicative of treasonable methods of thought. From Mr. W. E. Forster, the organizer of the Imperial Federation League (1884), who said that —
" He thought that those were the foes of the union, or at any rate sceptics and unbelievers in it, who would ask them to define then what shape federation should assume. " (a)
down to Mr. Cook (1911), who declares that —
" Insistence upon certain nomenclature is in itself suspicious,"
the same dislike of definition pervades imperialistic preaching.
"In my Kingdom Papers I have been trying to define, for my fellow Canadians, the relation of my country to the United Kingdom. I have been pointing out to them that in earlier days Canada was undoubtedly part of the British Empire — one of those territories ruled by the British people through the Colonial Secretary; that Canada has emerged from that subjec- tion and, therefore, from imperialism; that she is now really (although not nominally) independent — legislatively, execu- tively, fiscally, judicially, and with regard to foreign affairs (£); that it is wrong, therefore, to describe present relationship by the word imperial; and that, as Mr. Powell has said (c), the word 'empire' in that connection is a misnomer — Lord Milner has called it 'a very unfortunate misnomer.'
"Now, although all that seems to be indisputably true, very many imperialists do not like it, and Mr. Cook replies in this way:
" Against this theory, put the opposite one: that, whatever empire has meant in the past, it means not subjection but part- nership in the future, and that citizenship of an empire is some- thing wider and prouder than citizenship of one isolated country. Why should we limit our conceptions by dictionary definitions or by past history? "
"But I have not in the least suggested limiting anybody's conceptions by dictionary definitions. Indeed, I was not aware that any of the dictionaries supplied definitions of conceptions. All that I have asked is that in telling us what their conceptions are, imperialists would be good enough, as far as possible,
(a) A statement which reminded Lord Norton of "a prospectus in the days of the South Sea Bubble 'for an undertaking which shall in due time be revealed'." Nineteenth Century, Sep- tember, 1884, page 506.
(&) This summary should not be taken apart from the Papers which it so shortly sum- marizes.
(c) United Empire, August, 1911, page 540.
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to use words in their ordinary sense. Mr. Cook tells us that in the future empire means not what it has always meant, but something entirely different, something, indeed, quite opposite to its former signification. Until Mr. Cook wrote, it meant sub- jection; now it is said to mean partnership. . But we are still in the dark, for nobody has as yet heard of a political or constitu- tional partnership. The word is always used with reference to relations between individuals, and never with reference to relations between nations.
"Almost admitting the charge of indefiniteness which I make against most of the imperialists, Mr. Cook says:
" Whatever may be the confusion of thought among imper- ialists, and however unscientific and lacking in precision may be their terminology, they present to any but the bigoted provin- cialist a better creed than that offered by Mr. Ewart."
"That may be perfectly true, but nobody can possibly tell whether it is or not until the creed is put in something approach- ing precise form. For some years, I have been asking for pro- duction of this creed in intelligible language. I am still asking. Of course, I shall not be satisfied with such phrases as 'imperial unity,' or 'the higher and truer imperialism,' or 'some form of federation,' or the like. I ask that translation into the definite shall be made of that language.
"I have not in this article or elsewhere insisted upon 'certain nomenclature,' with a view to verbal victories. That would be both pedantic and childish. I do it because to my mind it is very clear that dictionary contempt, in the discussion of such extremely important questions, is not only misleading, but absurd and dangerous. I believe that the relations be- tween the countries ought to be understood; I believe that, for that purpose, precision in the use of language is absolutely essential; and I do most firmly believe that if by steady insist- ence upon the proper use of language (the only way of doing it) we could get well rid of the imperial idea — if we could but get into our thought and language the well-acknowledged fact of Canada's practical independence — we should do very much towards increasing the cordiality and effectiveness of that co- operation for which there is such sound basis in the unity of sentiment and ideals of the British and Canadian peoples. Im-
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perialists keep agitated and irritated many people who, upon practical points, are not out of sympathy with them."
Mr. Cook's Second Article:
"Utilizing the opening afforded by the criticism of the 'Kingdom Papers,' Mr. Ewart expands his theories of the future relations between the United Kingdom and the daughter nations. His main ostensible objection to imperialism ranges round his assertion that the words 'empire' and 'imperial' are no longer applicable to these relations, because they connote subjection. My reply to this was that they have got to connote something else in the future; but Mr. Ewart will have none of such arguments. To him a spade is not a spade unless you call it by its proper name. 'Canada,' he says, 'is really (but not nomi- nally) independent — legislatively, executively, fiscally, judicially, and with regard to foreign relations,' and yet he spends his time (as a footnote tells us) in the 'advocacy of Canadian independence.' In other words, having grasped the substance, he fights for the shadow — the elimination of the word 'empire.'
"Mr. Ewart asks that imperialists should define their creed. I speak for myself alone. My creed is a belief in the spirit which binds together what I will continue, pace Mr. Ewart, to call the empire. I believe that spirit to be stronger than bargains, but I know that it will have to be translated eventually into common action of some kind, and common defence must be its first expression. I believe, with Lord Milner, in 'an empire consisting, no doubt, of nations completely independent in local affairs, but having certain great objects in common and capable, by them, of developing a common policy and a common life'. "
Mr. Jebb's Article:
"As a proposition to be examined, imperialism must, Mr. Ewart argues, begin by defining itself in more precise terms than seems to be required by those to whom it is a creed. Even to adherents of the creed, such a demand may appear to be rea- sonable. Among them are some, at any rate in Britain, who at the present time are being impelled on the one hand, by tradition, to oppose 'home rule' for Ireland, and on the other, by reason, to give home rule a dispassionate consideration in
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the light of modern conditions. To such men home rule is not a creed but a proposition; and so they begin by asking the creed- bound home ruler to define in precise terms what he means by home rule. 'Produce your scheme* is their demand; and until the scheme is produced they retain suspicion, but reserve judg- ment. To that extent the attitude of some imperialists towards home rule is precisely analogous to Mr. Ewart's attitude towards imperialism.
"But this analogy, drawn for instruction, between home rule and imperialism, does not seem to hold good to the end. Mr. Ewart, obviously an ardent admirer of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, would probably call himself a home ruler if asked to reveal his sympathies in our domestic politics. But if pressed for a propo- sition or policy defining home rule, he would probably plead that a man can be an intelligent home ruler without having a precise scheme; that an intelligent belief in home rule necessitates nothing more than a belief that, in some form or other, Ireland should have a larger measure of control over her own affairs. At any rate, such is the attitude of very many, both here and in the dominions, who avow their sympathy with the Irish home rulers. But if Mr. Ewart concedes (as I imagine he would) that it has been an intelligent attitude for home rulers to pro- fess a vague creed without offering a precise policy, he ought to concede that imperialists may quite reasonably maintain a like attitude.
"Adopting Mr. Ewart's Canadian standpoint, the case for imperialism may be that the only available idea which is capable of unifying the Canadian peoples is the idea of building up the Dominion as the strongest pillar of the world's best and greatest empire. If he and Mr. Cook were deputed by their respective countries to prepare a scheme of future relationship, with stringent instructions to give it neither title or preamble, I am not sure that the conflict between nationalism and imperialism would survive the ordeal."
Mr. Jebb is one of the closest students in England of colonial affairs. He is the author of the notable works Studies in Colonial Nationalism and The Imperial Conference and is, moreover, a journalist of high repute. The Editor of United Empire could have appealed for my overthrow to no man more competent than Mr. Jebb, whose whole article is well worth perusal. In due
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course, I sent the Editor a reply. I was informed that a com- mittee was considering its publication. I protested that protection of an expert like Mr. Jebb from reply would be grossly unfair. I was told that limited space prevented publi- cation. I offered to pay all the cost of the few additional pages (the size of the journal varies considerably and runs as high as 81 pages). I was denied admission on any terms. I give you some extracts from my proposed reply.
Mr. E wart's Proposed Article:
"In order to prove my unreasonableness in asking for defini- tion of imperialism, Mr. Jebb says that probably I favor home rule for Ireland.
" But if pressed for a proposition or policy defining home rule, he would probably plead that a man can be an intelligent
home ruler without having a precise scheme But if Mr.
Ewarts concede (as I imagine he would) that it had been an intelligent attitude for home rulers to profess a vague creed without offering a precise policy, he ought to concede that imperialists may quite reasonably maintain a like attitude."
"To my way of thinking, nothing can be more stupid than to discuss home rule — to be in favor of it or against it — until you and your opponent, or you and your audience, understand what it is you are talking about. I do not say that ascertain- ment of all the details of a home rule bill is a necessary pre- requisite of discussion. I make the familiar distinction between the principle and the details — the general idea and the com- mittee work. I want to know the outline of the proposal. If you mean such home rule as a province of Canada has, I am in favor of it. If you mean such home rule as Canada has, I am against it. The home rule controversy forms a splendid illus- tration of the utter futility of debate without definition.
"And if it is essential in a controversy over a subject known by a descriptive word which indicates accurately although incompletely the content of the proposal, how much more is it indispensable when the descriptive word actually negatives the notion supposed to be in it. By home rule for Ireland we all understand (as Mr. Jebb says) 'a larger measure of control over her local affairs/ The title words shortly summarize the gen- eral idea. Very well: now what do imperialists mean by im- perialism? I don't ask the details. I want the outlines — the
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category — the general idea. And so far from getting any satisfactory reply I am told that what is meant is not anything which can be properly described by the word imperialism. Mr. Jebb appears to think that that is all that anybody need know in order to maintain an 'intelligent attitude toward the subject/ If I ask Mr. Jebb what he thought of home rule; and if he in- quired what I meant by the word; and I replied, 'I don't know, but I don't mean home rule,' he would probably realize the difficulty which I feel in arriving at an intelligent attitude towards imperialism which is not imperialism.
"In concluding his second point, Mr. Jebb supplies me with a capital illustration of the danger of arguing at large. He says that:
" If he (Mr. Ewart) and Mr. Cook were deputed by their respective countries to prepare a scheme of future relationship, with stringent instructions to give it neither title or preamble, I am not sure that the conflict between nationalism and imperialism would survive the ordeal."
"Vague and incomprehensible as was Mr. Cook's language, I had not imagined that there could be any doubt as to his intention to indicate a strong objection to nationalism. Mr. Jebb, however (a man of no mean powers), takes the contrary view. He believes that if Mr. Cook would only write out his scheme for the future relationship of the United Kingdom and Canada, he would be found to agree with me, and as I am an eager advocate of Canadian independence, Mr. Jebb evidently believes that Mr. Cook is a nationalist. If Mr. Jebb is wrong, he, at all events, has probably convinced Mr. Cook of the necessity for either definition or silence.
"But is Mr. Jebb wrong? I pressed Mr. Cook for a better creed than nationalism, and he replied in customary illusive phraseology as follows:
" My creed is a belief in the spirit which binds together what I will continue, pace Mr. Ewart, to call the empire. I believe that spirit to be stronger than bargains, but I know that it will have to be translated eventually into common action of some kind, and common defence must be its first expression. I believe, with Lord Milner, in an empire consisting, no doubt, of nations com- pletely independent in local affairs, but having certain great objects in common, and capable, by them, of developing a com- mon policy and a common life."
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"If that is the best definition Mr. Cook can give of his im- perialism, I admit a possibility of the correctness of Mr. Jebb's diagnosis. Except for the misuse of the word empire, there is nothing in the creed about imperialism or even suggestive of it. On the contrary, the creed sounds very like the customary after-dinner interchange of platitudinary sympathies between representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States; and but for a lawyer-like objection to a word or two, nationalists would readily subscribe it. Possibly, Mr. Jebb is right, but I shall hold to my opinion until Mr. Cook shall tell us which has made the better guess."
This closed the debate. I make no comment upon it. I leave it with you and merely suggest the questions: (i) Is Mr. Jebb right in thinking that Mr. Cook would agree with me as to the future relationship between the two countries? (2) Does not any doubt about that point arise merely from the vagueness of Mr. Cook's language? (3) Does not Mr. Cook give to the casual reader the impression that he is arguing for some proposal which he presents to "any but the bigoted provincialist" as some- thing better "than that offered by Mr. Ewart" ? (4) And finally is there any such proposal? Or is it not the fact (as Mr. Jebb indicates) that it is to a vague "creed" merely (as distinguished from a proposition) that we are asked to maintain "an intelligent attitude"?
I should have quoted Mr. Jebb's distinction between "a proposition to be examined," and a creed to be believed. After saying that this latter is what imperialism means to Mr. Cook, Mr. Jebb adds:
:* To others, imperialism is neither a cry nor a creed, but a proposition. Mr. Ewart is one of those. Yet, he seems to stand in a class by himself."
But Mr. Jebb should not have excluded me in that way. Im- perialism is no more a proposition to me than to anybody else. I have never seen it as a proposition. I have many times asked for its production as a proposition. I do not believe that it can be made into a proposition. I have not the faintest idea of what it would look like as a proposition. I feel perfectly certain that it is nothing but a cry, or at best a creed. And it is for that reason that I confidently repeat that here is but one propo-
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sition or proposal before us for consideration. Mr. Jebb very clearly establishes my point by his useful distinction.
And now, gentlemen, I beg to express the hope that what has been said will have dissipated one of the difficulties to which this address is devoted — namely, that which arises from the dis- inclination of imperialists to define their imperialism. The line of my argument, as you will have observed, is as follows:
1. The disinclination is based upon very creditable sentiment.
2. The sentiment is, however, misplaced. It might, conceiv- ably, have prevented all usurpations of self-governing authority (nobody thinks so), but it cannot forbid the proclamation of what we have done.
3. The disinclination is re-enforced by a lingering faith in the possibility of "imperial federation." There are still a few of the advocates of the lost cause left.
4. As "imperial federation" waned, the prospect of a proposition vanished; and now we have nothing but a cry, or at best a creed.
5. Colonialism is a "worn-out, by-gone thing," and must be suppressed.
6. There is but one proposal with reference to the political future of Canada, namely, independence.
7. Independence is merely the final step in Canada's political development. All antecedent steps have been taken. We have no reason to regret what we have done. We are proud of the result at which we have arrived, and we look forward with exultation, with pride and rejoicing, to nationhood as the culmination, the splendid culmination of our political evolution.
THE PRESENT SITUATION
Practically Canada is independent. Theoretically and legally, she is a colony. A completely independent country is one which not only can do as it likes, but can act without the supervision or asssent of any other country. Canada falls short of perfect independence — of nationhood. Her constitution is a British stat- ute, and when we want some amendment of the constitution, we have to ask the British Parliament to be good enough to amend its statute.
In 1869, doubts arose as to the power of Canada to appoint a deputy to the Speaker of the Senate, and an imperial statute was enacted to declare that it might be done.
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In 1873, Canada passed a statute providing for the examina- tion of witnesses upon oath by committees of the Senate and House of Commons; but it appeared that Canada had no power so to enact. Westminster came to our assistance, and we are now permitted to legislate in reference to the "privileges, im- munities, and powers" of our Senate and House of Commons, provided we do not go beyond those "held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons at Westminster" at the date of our legislation. We must do as they do, or do nothing at all.
In 1886, Canada wished to add to her Senate some represent- atives from the north-west territories, but she was powerless, and assistance once more had to be sought for at Westminster.
All that is humiliating enough, but it is rather in its inter- national than domestic aspect that I am most sensitive about the foolish inferiority of our position. Haiti, Costa Rica, Ven- ezuela— all the scores of trumpery little states of the world are nations, while Canada is a British possession — a colony — a Dominion beyond the seas. Honduras has the same relation to the seas as has Canada, but she is a nation, and, therefore, on this side of the seas. Canada, although you might not have observed it, is on the other side. At international councils, Can- ada has no seat. At the Peace Conference of 1907, Argentina (population 6,980,000), Bolivia (2,049,083), Bulgaria (4,284,844), Chili (3,254,451), Columbia (4,303,000), Cuba (2,150,112), Dom- inica (610,000), Ecuador (1,272,000), Guatemala (1,992,000), Haiti (2,029,700), Luxemburg (246,455), Montenegro (250,000), Nicaragua (600,000), Norway (2,392,698), Panama (450,000), Paraguay (631,347), Peru (4,500,000), Persia (9,500,000), Portu- gal (5,423,132), Roumania (6,865,739), Salvador (1,116,253), Servia (2,688,025), Siam (6,250,000), Uruguay (1,094,688), Ven- ezuela (2,685,696), — an average population of 2,944,765 were represented. Canada with her seven millions was nominally in- cluded in the phrase "His Majesty the King of the United King- dom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the seas," but in reality she had no more to do with the proceedings than had the inhabitants of Mars. Canada ought not to be omitted from the councils of the world.
Consider, too, the great importance of some of the agreements arrived at by the conference: —
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" Convention for the pacific settlement of international dis- putes.
" Convention respecting the limitation of the employment of force for the recovery of contract debts.
" Convention relative to the opening of hostilities.
" Convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land.
" Convention respecting the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons in case of war on land.
" Convention relative to the laying of automatic submarine contract mines.
" Convention respecting bombardment by naval forces in time of war.
" Convention for the adaptation to naval war of the prin- ciples of the Geneva Convention.
" Convention relative to certain restrictions with regard to the exercise of the right of capture in naval war.
" Convention relative to the creation of an international prize court.
" Declaration prohibiting the discharge of projectiles and ex- plosives from balloons. " (a)
Canada ought to have a voice in the settlement of all such matters. But she has not; and even when some of her special interests take on an international aspect she has to act through British officials, who cumber her freedom with strong suggestion falling little short of control.
You all know what befell us, for that reason, in the Alaska boundary affair. Let me give you an incident of the conduct in the recent fisheries arbitration. The contest being one which interested (upon our side) Canada and Newfoundland alone, we had a right to expect that we would have had a perfectly free hand in the selection of the counsel to be employed in it. Those of us engaged in the case did think so until we arrived in England, when we heard a rumour, and afterwards the definite statement, that the Attorney-General of England deemed it to be his duty to take the leading part in the argument. None of us knew the Attorney-General. Nobody would have thought of retaining him. He was an exceedingly busy man, and the polit- ical situation was one which at the moment appeared to make adequate study of our case impossible. But we had no option. Nominally the case was one between the British Government
(a) Second International Peace Conference, 1907, pages 61-62.
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and the United States Government. Canada was, theoretically, not even a party to it. The English Attorney-General was offi- cially entitled to control the case, and without the least consul- tation with Canada or Newfoundland, he became our counsel.
I am not complaining. The Attorney-General did splendid work, and for his services was made Lord Robson. And we must not forget that some fair reason can be given for controlling us in this way, so long as we are nominally a colony. Although the United Kingdom has no interest in the fisheries' case, she has interests all over the world which might be affected by any de- cision given in the case, and, naturally, while she would like to see Canada and Newfoundland succeed, she would be sorry to see her other interests affected. Unfortunately for us in the fisheries' case, the United Kingdom had, with reference to the most important question submitted to the tribunal — the question of our bays — a very divided object. She wanted Canada and Newfoundland to get their bays, but she did not want to be trammelled by a precedent that might be an embarrassment in her contention with Russia, Norway or other countries with re- spect to their bays. In fact, the only two substantial difficulties which we had with reference to the bays were, first, that the United Kingdom had always been indifferent as to our ownership of our bays, and secondly, that she had recently asserted, in other parts of the world, if indeed she was not at the moment assert- ing, views inconsistent with those for which Canada and New- foundland had always contended. What could possibly have been more damaging to our case than the statement made in the House of Lords by Lord Fitzmaurice, as recently as the 2ist February, 1907? Remember that the United States was con- tending that only such of our bays were territorial (belonged to the owner of the adjoining territory) as were not more than six miles wide, and that we were alleging ownership of all bays, of whatever width they might be, and the embarrassment caused by Lord Fitzmaurice's statement can be easily understood:
" According to the view hitherto accepted by all the depart- ments of the government chiefly concerned — the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, the Colonial Office, the Board of Trade, and the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries — territorial waters were — first, the waters which extended from the coast line of any part of the territory of a state to three miles from the low-water mark
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of such coast line; secondly, the waters of bays, the entrance to which was not more than six miles in width, and of which the entire land boundary formed part of the territory of a state.
" By custom, however, and by treaty and in special con- vention, the six mile limit has been frequently extended to more than six miles.
:< The Foreign Office of late years, as your Lordships are aware, has been involved in many important controversies where these questions have been raised — there was the famous decision of the High Court in the case of the 'Franconia,' the controversy with Denmark with regard to the fishing rights in the waters of Iceland, and last, but not least, the famous Behring Sea arbitra- tion. In all these cases the contention of the Foreign Office has been what I have described." (a)
Sir Robert Finlay and the Attorney-General struggled with this admission as best they could (b), and fortunately the tribunal did not feel themselves bound by it. If we had lost our bays it would have been because a case which was really the case of Canada and Newfoundland, was nominally and legally the case of the United Kingdom.
TWO KINGDOMS AND ONE KING
Canada's claim to international rank, however, involves one of two alternatives: either she must completely separate herself from the United Kingdom and supply herself with a new king — an impossible course; or else she must retain the same king, in which case there would be that which is not well understood, namely, two independent kingdoms with the same king. Let me try to explain that situation. The debate to which I have re- ferred touched upon the subject. In one of his articles Mr. Cook said: —
" Strangest of all is the idea that the crown can form a link between these Associated Kingdoms, which have * no common army or navy, no common policy, and no agreement for concerted action/ and which are free to make bargains with one another, or, failing that, to ' act accordingly,' i.e., make other arrange- ments. Imagine King George, as constitutional monarch of one kingdom signing a treaty with a foreign nation with which, as sovereign of another kingdom, he happened to be at war. One cannot believe Mr. Ewart capable of such Gilbertian humor, and can only suppose that the inclusion of the Crown in his
(a) North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration at the Hague. Oral Argument, pages 270-1 . (&) Ibid, pages 270-1: 1151.
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scheme is a concession to weaker spirits, and the term 'kingdom* a temporary lapse from that 'precision in the use of language* for which he contends."
Mr. Cook had forgotten that not only during earlier periods had the idea which he treats as mere burlesque been one of the most conspicuous and significant facts in the history of his own country, but that in later times, namely, from James I. to Victoria, except for seven years, it had been in fullest operation. For 104 years, the crown was the only constitutional link between Eng- land and Scotland, and for 123 years it was the only link between England and Hanover. During the first of those periods England was at war without the co-operation of Scotland; and during the second, the relation of England to Hanoverian wars was con- trolled by the British statute which provided:
" That in case the crown and imperial dignity of this realm shall hereafter come to any person, not being a native of the Kingdom of England, this nation be not obliged to engage in any war for the defence of any dominions or territories which do not belong to the Crown of England without the consent of parlia- ment."
The king-union with Hanover terminated at the accession of Victoria to the British throne, because of the existence of the Salic law in Hanover prohibitory of female sovereigns. In these later days the acceptance of the idea which to Mr. Cook seems so ridiculous ought not to be difficult. Formerly, when the king ^ was the real executive and pledged his royal honor and so on, separate action of two countries of which he was king required distinction between his two capacities; and the idea of the king signing a treaty in one capacity and not conforming to it in another, although easily understood, and carried into actual prac- tice, might to some people have required explanation. With the transfer of executive power from the king to his several govern- ments, all difficulty disappears. Now it is not the king who pledges his faith: it is the government of which he is the nominal head; and one of his governments may agree and the other may not. We are perfectly familiar with the idea in its application , to commercial treaties and to commercial war through the oper- ation of hostile tariffs. For a form of a modern war-treaty look at the Anglo-Japanese agreement of July last:
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" The Government of Great Britain and the Government of Japan have agreed "
That the British Government did not intend to include Can- ada in the treaty, was made quite clear by ministerial replies in the British House of Commons. At the imperial conference of 1911, Sir Wilfrid Laurier said:
" We have taken the position in Canada that we do not think that we are bound to take part in every war"; (a)
and shortly afterwards Mr. Asquith was asked in the House of Commons
" Whether this doctrine was held by any one of the other Dominions; whether it was accepted by the British govern- ment," etc.
Mr. Asquith replied, in part, as follows:
" The matters are too grave and delicate to be dealt with by way of question and answer.'* (b)
Sir Edward Grey's reply to a question with reference to the renewal of the Japanese treaty was still more illuminating. He was asked:
" Whether the Japanese government were informed as to what course of action would be pursued by the Dominions, should Great Britain be involved in war under article two of the treaty."
The reply, in part, was:
" The action to be taken by the Dominions in any war in which His Majesty's government may be engaged is a matter to be considered by His Majesty's government in consultation with the Dominions, and is not for discussion with any foreign government." (c)
Canada, then, is not pledged by any treaty with Japan to join in rendering the military support which the United Kingdom has promised on her own behalf.
Mr. Cook sees something Gilbertian in all this. So should I, if I were accustomed to mislead myself by the misuse of the word empire — if I customarily thought of Canada as subordinate to the United Kingdom, or as forming a political unit with it — if (to recur to Mr. Cook's metaphor) I constantly spoke of the shadow of one thing as though it were the substance of another.
(a) Proceedings, page 117.
(b) Times, 28 July, 1911. («) Times, 21 July, 1011.
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Let Mr. Cook but think (and for that purpose speak) of the countries as two associated kingdoms rather than as one em- pire, and he will find that all the humour of the situation will disappear.
History is full of examples of one man occupying the chief political position in two or more countries, in which every other respect were absolutely separate and distinct. Put your finger on almost any date you like, and you will find some such case. Confine yourself to British history and count up the years in which the King of England was also (really or nominally) King of France, or a part of it; in which the King of England was also King of Scotland; and which the King of England was also the King (or Elector — it is the same thing) of Hanover, and you will find that duality has been the rule. Had Queen Victoria been a boy, dual-sovereignty would have continued — King George would probably now be King of Hanover, and I should have been spared the trouble of explaining that such a situation is not a creation of the Gilbertian sort of brain. Moreover, if Sir John Macdonald had had his way, Canada would have been a kingdom in 1867. And if, therefore, dual-sovereignty did ter- minate in 1837, it would have commenced again after an interval of only thirty years.
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. — For greater clearness let me refer with more particularity to the two king-unions that I have men- tioned. In 1603, James VI., of Scotland, succeeded to the English throne as James I., inaugurating a period of 104 years, during which the two countries acknowledged the same sovereign, but were in every other respect completely separate and independent kingdoms:
(1) James VI. of Scotland continued to be James VI. of Scot- land, although James I. of England.
(2) Each country retained its own flag. They could not have had one national flag, because they were not one nation. A flag means sovereignty, and as Englishmen had no share in the sov- ereignty of Scotland, and Scotchmen no share in the sovereignty of England, any combination of their flags would have contra- dicted the facts. The union jack could not have appeared until — 104 years afterwards — the government of the two countries had become united under one parliament (1707). It is for a precisely similar reason that the union jack, in its unadapted
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form, has ceased to be the fitting flag for Canada. It is the emblem of legislative control, and the United Kingdom (whose flag alone it is) has, in reality, no legislative control over Canada. England and Scotland, during their king-union, had different flags, because from a legislative point of view, they were inde- pendent states. From the same point of view Canada is now an independent state, and for that very good reason ought to fly her own flag — the flag introduced by Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Charles Tupper, and approved and endorsed by Lord Stanley of Preston when Governor-General of Canada.
(3) Each country retained its own parliament, and neither parliament had the slightest control over the other.
(4) The countries remained strongly antipathetic towards each other, and they hit at one another by trade-laws and other statutes to which the common king gave the requisite assent.
(5) Animosity culminated in statutory provisions for separate kings in case of the death of Queen Anne without heirs. The English parliament, by 12 and 13 William III., provided for the accession of the heirs of the Electress Sophia, while the Scotch parliament enacted (1704) a method for the selection of a suc- cessor—
" Providing always that the same be not a successor to the crown of England unless," etc.
adding conditions improbable of fulfilment. The common sov- ereign assented to both statutes. It appears to be very clear that there may be two independent kingdoms with the same king. ENGLAND AND HANOVER. — Seven years after the completion of the union of England and Scotland, another foreign sovereign (the Elector of Hanover) came to London, and was crowned as King of Great Britain (1714). This duality lasted until the accession of Victoria in 1837, and during the 123 years, England and Hanover occupied precisely the same relative positions as those just terminated between England and Scotland:
(1) The Elector of Hanover continued to be Elector of Han- over, although King of Great Britain.
(2) Each country retained its own flag and its own form oi government. Neither attempted to interfere with the other.
(3) The detachment of the two countries was recognized in- ternationally. That is an important point. Let me elaborate it
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a little. When the Elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain, the northern war was raging, between Sweden on the one side, and Denmark, Prussia and Russia on the other. In the following year George, as Elector of Hanover, joined in treaties with these three powers, by which in return for the war-assistance of Hanover, he was put in possession of certain Swedish territory. Thereafter, and for four years, George, as Elector of Hanover, was at war with Sweden, while, as King of Great Britain, he was at peace. I do not say that his influence with his British min- isters did not enable him to make certain demonstrations with the British fleet in the Baltic which were of value to the allies; but I do say that the pretext (to a very important extent, the real reason) for those demonstrations was protection of British merchantmen, and that Sweden accepted the pretext and treated Great Britain as a non-belligerent. For example, when Charles XII. (King of Sweden) was urged to help the Jacobites in Eng- land, he (to quote a recent writer, Mr. Chance):
" admitted the advantage to himself, but refused his consent on the ground that the King of England had not declared war on him." (a)
Afterwards, when Peter of Russia urged George, as King of England, to furnish the allies with money, George replied
" that, as king, he was not at war with Sweden, and as elector, would perform the engagement of his treaties." (b)
Take also an incident connected with the proposed treaties with Denmark in 1718:
" At Copenhagen (Denmark) attention was principally given to the proposed treaties with Great Britain and Hanover. The former had been practically agreed to, but the latter was hin- dered by the anxiety of Denmark to keep well with Russia and Prussia." (c)
The political separation between the two countries was so well understood that the diplomacy of England (as a power at peace with both Hanover and Sweden) could be used for the purpose of terminating the war between the belligerents:
" Lord Carteret, ambassador extraordinary and plenipoten- tiary (of England) reached Stockholm (Sweden) on nth July,i7i9.
(a) George I. and ike Northern War, by J. F. Chance, page 78. &) Ibid, page 101. Ibid, page 259.
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His commission was to renew the treaty of 1700 with Great Britain, lately expired; to support Colonel Bassewitz in his ne- gotiation for peace with Hanover, and to promote peace with Denmark and Prussia." (a)
Early in 1719, George, as Elector, entered into another treaty with Austria and Poland, directed principally against Russia.
" English ministers were not informed of the treaty till it had been signed. Then a declaration attached to it by which George, as king, undertook to send a British fleet to the succour of Dantzig and Elbing if they were threatened, caused great difficulties, as it required an English counter-signature; and this was never ratified, it seems. " (b)
Peter, of course, did not like Hanoverian opposition, but he did not fail to distinguish between Hanover and Great Britain:
" Peter the Great, now, with the view of conciliating British sentiment, declared to the merchants of that nation at St. Peters- burg that he imputed the King of England's hostility towards himself entirely to his Hanoverian interests; he did not blame Great Britain, and would continue his favor to them as here- tofore, so that they need fear nothing on account of Hanoverian intrigues, but might pursue their trade freely, provided they did not concern themselves in those intrigues." (c)
It is unnecessary further to multiply illustrations. European history is full of them. But perhaps a useful word may be written with reference to Mr. Cook's suggestion that my reference to the king-union of England and Holland is "ominous." He means, of course, that eventually it ceased to exist. It did, but only because of the Salic law in Hanover. There is no such law in Canada.
The king-union between England and Scotland is not ' om n- ous." It ended happily in legislative union. When James VI. set out from Edinburgh on a Tuesday morning in the spring of 1603 to be received in England as James I. there were, no doubt, some persons who could have told him that dual-kingship would encounter many embarrassments. They were right; but the suffi- cient answer was that the alternative — separate kingships — was much worse. In the same way, I reply that dual-kingship is better than Canadian colonialism; that it is better than separate
(a) Ibid, page 333. (fc) Ibid, page 292. (c) Idid. page 416.
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kingships; that it is better than Canadian republicanism; and that it is better than annexation to the United States. It is better than what we have at present. And it is better than anything that can be proposed. Gentlemen, that is a very strong case.
I do not say that the dual-kingship of the United Kingdom and Canada will end in complete separation or in some closer union. I am not a prophet, and for some years (taught by many disappointments) have not attempted the role. All that I urge is (i) that Canada must shed her swaddling clothes and (2) that there is but one way in which she can do it.
Indeed, the precedent of the English-Scottish union ought to afford comfort and hope to those imperialists who anticipate the discovery, at some future time, of some acceptable scheme of closer union. And it is most significant, and to nationalists most encouraging, that some of the very best of present-day imperialists are commencing not only to recognize the inevitable- ness of nationalism, but actually to welcome it — although tenta- tively and conditionally — as a necessary prerequisite of the fulfilment of their aspirations. For example, Lord Milner (the chief of English imperialists) said:
" One thing alone is certain. It is only on these lines, on the lines of the greatest development of the several states, and their coalescence, as fully developed units, into a greater union, that the empire can continue to exist at all. The failure of the past attempts at imperial organization is due to our imperfect grasp of the idea of the wider patriotism. In practice, we are slipping back to the antiquated conception of the mother-country as the centre of a political system with the younger states revolving around it as satellites. Against that conception the growing pride and sense of independence of the younger states revolts. " (a)
Principal Peterson has recently said:
" Moreover, there can be no doubt that, in the course of a natural development, the ideal of nationalism is, in the case of Canada, rapidly displacing the colonial status. " (b)
In "The Empire and the Century" (a book befriended by Lord Grey) there is the following (page 40) :
" Before federation or anything like it is possible, certain conditions must be present. There must be a comparatively uniform development throughout the empire, the different parts
(a) Standard of Empire, 23 May, 1908. (6) University Mag,, vol. page 126.
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which make the federal units showing a certain level of civic well-being. One state may be richer than another, or may base its wealth on different grounds; but all must hate attained a certain height of self-conscious national life, otherwise they will enter the federation on different terms, and instead of harmony will find abiding discontent."
In the last number of United Empire, Dr. Parkin said:
" The proof seems to be conclusive that this growth and organization on a national scale are necessary stages on the journey towards complete unity
" We may be perfectly sure that in proportion as each of these countries approaches a state of national consciousness it will also acquire a deeper sense of national responsibility.
" And when the full sense of national responsibility is reached, when each of these dominions finally faces its relations to the outer world, I have no doubt about the turn their thoughts and policy will take, if they have inherited what has been called the saving common sense of our race. They will say that these responsi- bilities can only be met by a united, and a closely united, em- pire. " (a)
In Professor Egerton's last book there is the following: —
" In broad contrast with the United States after the war of independence, and with the Dominion, the Commonwealth, and the Union of British South Africa, the British Empire has already reached a stage of development at which its component parts consist of communities with most of the attributes of distinct nations. The most keen-sighted of imperialists now recognize that what is necessary is a federation of nations, not of prov- inces." (6)
And Mr. Reginald V. Harris (the winner of the prize offered by The Standard of Empire for the best essay on "The Govern- ance of Empire") has said:
" There seems to be, in short, a virtual declaration on their (the Dominion's part) for autonomy first and combination after- wards. Nor does it appear that any other solution of the problem would be either advisable or possible."
That language is to nationalists very welcome and very in- spiring. To the rank and file of imperialists, it ought, I think to come as almost conclusive argument against cessation of fur- ther opposition to nationalism.
(a) It is noteworthy that at the last general election for the first time in the history of Canada a somewhat influential association believed that votes could be obtained by the ad- vocacy of a platform which had for its first object: " To promote, especially among those of British birth and origin, the sense of Canadian Nationality, as an increasing power within the British Empire " (Nineteenth Century, January, 1912, page 180).
(6) Federations and Unions in the British Empire, pages 100-101.
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I must, however, not appear to ask their assistance, or even their neutrality on the ground that nationalism is a step and not an end. I believe that so far as political connection is concerned, it will be a finality. But I also most firmly believe that it will be only the commencement of a new Canadian life — of a life in which a strong unifying Canadian sentiment will quickly spread from Sydney to Victoria and which just because it has unified, just because it has become national, just because it has found its expression in the universal use of one Canadian flag, and just because the long-drawn struggle for constitutional freedom has ended, will be the better able to respond to the friendships which bind together the ocean-separated subjects of the same great king.
I trust, gentlemen, that I have succeeded, at all events to some extent, in dissipating from your minds the two principal difficulties which appear to stand in the way of popular accept- ance of the elevation of our country to that dignity of inter- national position, in which she shall be treated, not as a political satellite, not as a colony regulated from Downing Street, but as herself a member, and an important member, of the great family of the nations of the world.
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[ February I2th, igi2 ]
BRITISH RULE IN INDIA
By ALEXANDER FRASER
SIR VALENTINE CHIROL in his recent book on India says that education, of all the forces at present at work in India, is the most important and most responsible for unrest. It may seem absurd for a man from Ceylon to talk about India. I went to Ceylon against my will, because the doctors told me I could not live in India. When I went there Mr. Mott told me that Ceylon was the key of India. I thought he was exaggerating, but as a matter of fact he was probably correct. Small nations have tremendous advantages over big ones in being able to grasp their problems, and see the results of experiments much more directly; and as a result it has been the smaller nations which have chiefly influenced the world. Palestine gave us religion, Greece philosophy, Rome law, roads and rule, and the British gave constitutional government to Europe, Japan self-consciousness to Asia.
In Ceylon we have the same races, the same problems and the same unrest, though the degrees are different in different aspects. We have the same factors at work and can see the results of our experiments there. I would not say that this could apply to the whole of India, because about the only fact that is true for the whole of India is that India is east of Suez. I do not believe there is any other one statement of the whole which would also be true of each part.
Think of the great size of India — it needs illustration to bring that home to most men and make them realize the difficulty of it. In the United States I found a great deal of criticism of British rule in India on the analogy of the Philippines. There are differences between the two, and the greatest perhaps is size. In tackling any Indian problem you must think of the popu-
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lation, which is greater than that of America, north and south, Africa, and Australia combined. That is what British states- men have to tackle, when dealing with Indian education and unrest.
Then there are 2,378 distinct castes in India, and these castes cannot marry or have interchange of social relationship. They can have business relations but not social. There are over 100,000 subdivisions, the Brahmins alone having 1880 divisions which cannot intermarry as a general rule. That shows the extent of the social problem. There are 183 different languages, some of which differ far more in roots and elements than do the languages of Europe. Of course the two great lingua francas growing up are English for the educated and Hindu for the 193,000,000 people who now understand it.
But India is a growing community to-day. All over you find Mohammedans and Hindus working together, meeting on the same platforms. A committee was recently founded for the emancipation of women at Benares, with Mohammedans, Hindus and Christians on it. Any great idea now spreads rapidly from end to end of India, and we have done that by our administration. British rule is making the country one. Our railways, our commerce, our justice, the appeals from one part of the country to the other, the one Sovereign and one law recognized all over India, with such great examples as that shown by the recent Durbar, make them more and more feel that they are one people under one rule. The division is becoming in- creasingly one of color — brown vs. white, often the conscious unity of the browns as against the whites.
But the unrest in India is not chiefly political and that is a thing we must get into our minds of our Empire as a whole, who are responsible for the rule of India. The unrest is not mainly political. There are irreconcilables, but the fact that these have only killed those who were popular shows that political unrest is not representative of India. Take some of the men who were killed. Jackson, who was murdered while going to the theatre for a special celebration in his honor was the most popular man in Western India. As he was one of the most popular men in Southern India, Curzon White, mur- dered by a friend of the missionaries there, had been offered protection by the government and threatened with assassination
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because he stood for building over the bridge between the races. It has been the popular men who have been killed by the anar- chists and irreconcilables, who as much represent the unrest in India as do the anarchists of Europe in political movements there. There are all sorts of other men representing phases of the unrest, which are not necessarily anti-British. Gokhale, a strong statesman, probably the greatest living Hindu, is one of them.
The only way I can think of to describe this Indian unrest adequately is by the use of British history terms. Look back on English history and you will see that England was profoundly moved for 400 years under the influence of the great renaissance from Europe; which seemed to many so to cut away the bases of intellectual thinking and life that atheism and materialism would follow. When the Reformation carne, people thought the foundations of everything were being cut away. Then came the political unrest under the Stuarts with its final rebellion and turmoil and the country reduced to a cipher in European politics. Then came the inventions of the early I9th Century, the industrial revival, the Chartist uprisings, and the industrial unsettlement, lasting to our own day.
There you have four great movements within 400 years. Take India, a vast people, far more conservative, far more rigid, with far more emphasis laid upon doctrine and manner of life; and into it you have injected in one generation the renais- sance due to Western thought, with the new religious ideas of the West, with a complete political change from absolutism to democracy, with economic unsettlement involving a rise in prices, and with a general desire for better living — the wonder is not that unrest has shown itself in a few isolated places with bomb throwing and murders, but that it has shown itself so little.
The greatest factor in causing this unrest is education. Frequently, in the States I heard the British government blamed for not introducing compulsory education more speedily. It was said Britain had had India for 150 years, counting the com- pany period, and 90 per cent, of the people were still illiterate. America had had the Phillipines 10 years and only 70 per cent, were illiterate, and soon there would be none.
Very well, but one population is rather less than some of our big cities, the other is enormously vaster than the whole of the
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rest of our Empire, and we cannot undertake any plan which means that we must educate India. The only thing we can do is to encourage local liberality and effort. We say, "If you will do something in your village for a school, we will do the rest. You start the school and we will do most of the upkeep." You cannot do better than that. You cannot add to English or Indi n finances the compulsory education of a huge area like that. It would in some districts mean a great breakdown — it is local backbone and independence which we want to encourage. These criticisms are probably due to ignorance.
But there are two criticisms which can be leveled at English education as carried out in India. One is not entirely our fault, while the other is largely our fault. First, the education is secular, and secondly it is denationalizing. The first criticism has been made by every commission sitting on education in India; but the denationalizing tendency has only recently been noted. Religion is the basis of the whole life of India. It is entirely based upon an unscientific and wrong view of the physi- cal world. We are taking the children of these people, whose whole life is so religious, to school, and teaching them from a standpoint which destroys the very basis of their religious life. What is the result? A government report of a committee created in 1885 says: "Already thousands, and in a short time, with the rapid spread of education, millions, think India to be wandering in a dark wilderness of unbelief, having lost faith in their own religion, and having no knowledge of any newer or better creed." Sir William Hunter, a teacher and inspector of schools, vice-chancellor of the Calcutta University, when he was chairman of Lord Dufferin's education commission, examined 193 educated natives, and every one of them deprecated secular education as ruining the people, turning out men without dis- cipline or attainment, without God, men who proved to be also the most unemployed and unemployable.
Let me show you from Calcutta the depths to which careless- ness for moral welfare of the people can go in secular instruction. There are 10,000 students at Calcutta University, 3,000 living outside the town and 7,000 inside, of whom but 1,000 are in hostels and 6,000 have no regular homes. The majority come in from outside towns, and the question is where shall they livef No respectable family in India with its difficulties of caste and
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morality takes in boarders, and the result is that most of these young men are living in houses of ill fame. Can you expect them to turn out moral and strong leaders for India? You can only expect that they will be disliked by their people, unemployed by the British or their own people; yet they are educated men who can speak well and raise sedition. It is one of the most disastrous things in India that the moral element has been left out of education.
The government has frequently tried to introduce ethical teaching, but has found it impossible without having it on a religious basis; so from 1856 onwards, when the government took over education, it has always been its policy to give large grants to anyone who would undertake moral and religious instruction all through India; and to help any denominational colleges, be these Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian, which teaches religion as the basis of ethics. But this policy, though re-affirmed in 1885, 1897 and 1901, has never been carried out except for 15 years. Not because the great leaders of the government do not wish to carry it out, but because they work through depart- ments. India is a bureaucracy. The officials in charge of public instruction are not so well educated as the civilians, for our best brains and efforts go into control of government — that is locking the stable door after the steed is stolen at the schools! They have control of colleges and grants. A director of publi^ instruction goes to a government college and wants changes. He says to the principal "Do this" and he does it. When he goes to an aided college he has to persuade the principal. So he prefers to go to the college where he can order without the necessity of persuading. So regardless of good points in the policy itself, there is always a dead set made against the granting of aid through departments. We formed last winter a committee of the Houses of Parliament in Great Britain to look after this declared policy and see that it is carried out, and I hope it will be. Although I am a missionary I would very much rather send a boy to a Mohammedan or Hindu college than to a secular one. These religious colleges are doing a great work for the Hindus, Brahmins, Mohammedans and others, as also are the Christian colleges.
Then take the second question, denationalization. Sir Henry Craik, one of the oldest educationalists in Scotland, and
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M. P. for Glasgow University, took a trip to the East and wrote a book on India. It sums up what many people think, that in its main lines Indian education is hopelessly wrong. He says: "I heard this even from the boys, and I believe we are most unfair not to link intellectual training more clearly to life and tradition, and abandon the senseless attempt to turn the Oriental into the Western mind. That the education system demands recasting is the opinion of everyone capable of judging." A conference of educationalists considered that the system devel- oped young men away from the language and sympathy of their own people. The true aim of education should always be to cultivate in individuals the feeling of life, to contribute to, not draw them away from the national body. The ultimate end of that system must inevitably be extinction and decay. Only those in contact with their fellow tribesmen can influence them.
What is denationalization in education? I have one of the strongest staffs perhaps in India or Ceylon. The first question we set ourselves when it was thus strengthened was, what is denationalization? We came to the conclusion first that there were some things it did not mean. When playing football it did not mean that a man should wear his national skirts and be upset, or that a man was denationalized because he wore spikes in a race or ate curry with a spoon. It meant that if you are to keep a man national in his work and able to help his own people, he must be able to understand the need of going into the ranks of his own people and looking at things from their own point of view. We reduce the numbers at the college from 600 to 400, considering it better to get a thorough education of the few than a partial education of the many; and increased the staff from two Europeans to seven, and also strengthened the native staff. Then we raised the fees from 6,500 to 18,000 rupees, or individualy from 400 to 700 rupees. We increased the fees so as to make them pay well for education, and thus learn to value it.
Having got the people we wanted, our next thing was to try and get them educated and still keep near their own people. First we increased the dormitories and put in each dormitory one European and one Cingalese master and two prefects for each dormitory. It is better generally to have the Cingalese
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natives in charge of the dormitories, and have the English, Irish and Scotch amongst them.
The next thing was how we were to get hold of these boys in their sports, such as football, swimming and games. We developed them largely along these lines, and made up one of the best cricket teams in the island, thanks to a good captain. Once we were to play Royal College, which had a much weaker team than ours, and I told our fellows that we were playing for the game, and would have the advantage of our own supporters, so that they must be careful to applaud anything the other side did well. But just before the game our captain, on whom we so much relied, was taking down with enteric, and as the result of two days' playing, we lost in a close finish by two wickets, and the boys cheered the victory of the Royal College — some of them with the tears running down their faces, but they thought it the right thing to do. The same in football, we may meet a team which outweighs and can beat us; but to go in determined to make their victory just as hard as possible — that spirit is worth while.
Then we taught the vernaculars which had been previously neglected. Ninety per cent, of those going into examinations at the university could not write their own father's language; they spoke it, but could not read or write it. We taught them these, and the study has become very popular. Then we taught them their own folk lore, which is so valuable, and showed them the value of it. The result was that when all those boys began to instruct their fathers, they found that they had to sit under them to learn the folk lore. Thus they became pupils of the people they thought to teach, and both found that the other had really valuable knowledge.
Then we got into village schools. This is the great trouble in Ceylon — they try to wear their chests as concave as possible; but our pupils go and teach physical drill and other exercises in the schools, and so get the school masters to raise the physical condition of the villages. Then we have taken up historical work so that they can compare their history with ours. We have a big map at the college with important things from the newspapers cut out and hung on the wall where they can go and read it. Thus we get them interested in the great crises that are always coming to villages in different parts of the island
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with outbreaks of malaria or smallpox or floods. Then the students go out and vaccinate the people, and give them medi- cine and help to get things in shape. We also try to get them interested in agriculture and turn their education from Greek and Latin to things they can do with their hands, agriculture and laboratory experiments. Then we plan work in the open air, out in the woods and fields, and give them an interest in village life. Some who have a musical gift get the native music, others study the native medicine, which is more valuable than ours for many tropical diseases.
Then there is the Indian slum. The whole country is paralyzed by the idea of "merit." A beggar is a spiritual economic necessity, so that you can heap up merit for the next world. Which is pauperizing for the beggar and not much good for you. We have got them to realize that they can use their desire for the betterment of other people more reasonably. For instance, one of our men found the rickshaw coolies getting consumption by exposure to rain and cold weather after a hard run. They took a subscription and built for these coolies a club house. The coolies have to pay rent for it, and in the meantime the students go down in relays to the club house, and help the coolies with music and fixtures interesting and educating them at the same time.
They also took up a subscription for deaf and dumb and blind education. They publish a vernacular newspaper which goes to the villages, and helps to counteract much of the poi- sonous stuff in the many small publications going through the villages. They have also organized a social service society. There is one other thing to do in Ceylon. They have started compulsory education; it is already effective except in the City of Colombo and the Desert of Hoova, where, as there is only one person to a square mile it is difficult to educate his child.
Gokhale, the Hindu leader of the National Movement, introduced the bill for compulsory education in India. It is not a complete law, although a great improvement. It means that men and women teachers will carry the general and political unrest right through the whole of India and Ceylon, teaching the whole population instead of only two or three million leaders. So in time you will have the whole 300,000,000 affected by it unless the education is reasonable and national.
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The effect of the education in my own college is that where in the past in debates we had slanders and bitter attacks against the British Government, now we have absolutely none of that sort of thing. There is perfect unity and amity between the races, because they are understanding their people and working to aid them. We are not going to be able to build or man all the schools. What we are going to do, I believe, is to capture the teachers. That is the point to which the British Government and the Missionary Societies should go straight; because the missionaries have opportunities to get to the people as no government educationalists have done or, I expect, ever will do, because they are especially there for that work.
Then there is the question of how to get hold of the teachers. I was a member of a commission appointed to go through the Island and study how to lay down a wise and true policy. I had to go to native offices and see all their papers, study their land system, study the different castes and see their head men, who are usually hostile to education; see the teachers and find out where they were trained; what advantages they took of their training; how they were teaching, and so on. I found the teachers were the most important people of the village. The village teacher is the most important person in the Indian Empire, more important than the Lieut.-Governor; because he is the witness of Western civilization everywhere. In every village his is the house of call. People come and go to him be- cause he is the person teaching the children and building up the future. But he has great opposition to meet. The enor- mous mass of the priesthood, and the social machine are against him; the head man is generally not in his favor, being naturally a Tory. The landlords are against him; and also, curiously enough, the sentimental European and American. There are always sentimental Europeans and Americans who go around saying that we are destroying the estate of the noble and primi- tive man. He is not primitive to begin with, and I do not think we are destroying his nobility. But looking at the teachers I found that, whether products of native or other machinery, they were practically all badly trained. Twenty-seven per cent, had no educational training. Forty-two per cent, had not even been pupil teachers and had no training of any kind whatsoever.
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When I reported I referred to this, pointing out that the low social position they held in the villages was due largely to their ignorance.
The most important thing in training is personality. You must have close personal touch with the men and understand them. If we had not cut down our 670 boys to 400, and increased our staff, we should not have been able to get this close touch with them. And secondly, normal training should be effective to teach teaching from the point of view of the people. Unless you teach from the inside, illustrating with things they know, you might as well stop. Then, what subjects to teach? The ordinary normal and religious subjects I made use of very carefully. Over 90 per cent, of the populace are agriculturists and your man to be able to teach them must be interested in that. We have studied agricultural education in India and we think we have a solution of how to teach them. Every man who leaves our place must first pass in agriculture. He will have to cultivate at an ordinary profit both dry and wet land, in order that he may be economically self-supporting. What we want for an industrial mission is one which fits a man to train his people in agriculture, how to irrigate their land, and what is best to sow, and the other knowledge needed in every village. From the children drawn from the agricultural classes and taught in the schools, we will make inspectors of agriculture. Or they shall take holdings and cultivate them as experimental farms, so that they will be able to raise the standard of agriculture wherever they go. We shall teach them also how to diagnose elementary diseases and their remedies. A great deal can be learned in the treatment of malarial fever and the elimination of the mosquito; and their wives can do much: the women are better teachers than the men. By doing this we shall send handy men to the villages, so that they may be as far as possible representative to the villagers of the adequacy of the God they represent, coming in contact with all that they need and trying to give them something worth having.
We send these men into a dull uninteresting environment, with no furlough such as missionary and government servants have. They work there from year's end to year's end with comparatively few books in the vernacular and no interesting people passing through. The result is that the longer a man is
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at his work the less he is interested in it, and he becomes dull. We are going to bring them out every seventh year, applying the Sabbatical principle, and keep seven men where we employ six. It is more expensive, but the best system; and they will get a further amount of spiritual training, coming and going all the time from the different villages to the center. If we can keep this heart strong and sympathetic we shall be sending out live blood to every single limb. My concern is for the Empire. Compulsory education will mean loss of Empire if it is dena- tionalizing in character. But if you make them better people for their land, it will check the unrest and make them strong and true, and make India a real gem in our Imperial diadem, perhaps the greatest of all.
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[ Monday, February igih,
SIBERIA
By J. MACKINTOSH BELL, Ph.D., F.R.G.S.
London, England
IN considering the Russian Empire the^casual observer is apt to be ignorant of the vastness of the country — a compact land area covering 8,660,282 square miles, some two land a half times the size of our own Dominion of Canada. Its northern shores are washed by the waves of the Arctic Ocean, which in the western part at least is much more open than the ocean to the north of Canada. On the east is the Pacific and on the west is that inlet of the Atlantic known as the Baltic Sea. On the south its boundaries lie close — as distances are considered in Asia — to the frontier of India and the Persian Gulf. To the Northeast the Aleutian Islands connect it with that part of North America which we Canadians so regret not having {ac- quired, and which the Russians wish they had not sold to^pay a portion of the costs of the railway from Moscow to St. Peters- burg.
Within this huge area stretching over 45 degrees of latitude and 17 degrees of longitude, is every variety of climate, from the perpetual snows of the Arctic wastes beyond the Lena to the genial and long continued arid heats of the southern plains jof Turkestan. The resources of the country are stupendous; although in many localities they are not utilized or perhaps merely unskilfully husbanded. But the Russians are slowly developing their country and improving their methods in almost every branch of industrial life. Even the dull mind of the. moujik is gradually awakening to the value of his heritage, and I doubt if there is any cleverer artisan than he, once he is alert.
The finances of the Empire are in excellent condition, not- withstanding the recent very great expenditure for naval and
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military purposes, and for the relief of the sufferers from the famine which did much damage during the past season. The result of the Russo-Japanese war was, I think, a surprise to most people, and to none more than the Russians themselves. Should she now be forced to face another powerful nation, I doubt very much if she would be found so poorly prepared.
See by the following dry figures how she has recovered since the war. The amount of the free balance at the beginning of each of the past ten years has been as follows:
1901 £10,500,000 surplus
1902 26,840,000
1903 25,740,000
1904 38,130,000
1905 6,190,000
1906 15,800,000 deficit
1907 5,850,000 surplus
1908 890,000
1909 180,000
1910 10,700,000
1911 34,000,000
This recovery, as the Times has recently pointed out, speaks graphically for the extent, stability and remarkable elasticity of the Russian Empire. By the beginning of 1912 it was ex- pected that this surplus would be no less than £42,500,000, but I have not heard yet whether this great total was realized.
With these figures before us, we must admit that the Russian people form no poor ally in the "entente cordiale." On the other hand when we realize the fact that her army is in a vastly better state than when the Japanese war broke out, and that her territory is compact and self-supporting, we will equally agree that she might be a powerful enemy, at least by land. Our own Empire lies close to her southern boundaries, where she is slowly but surely gaining ground. Consequently, we must be on the ground and watch her closely; but I for one believe that her friendship is more to be valued than her enmity.
But it is not of the Russian Empire I am to speak to-day, but of that southern portion of it in Siberia, known as the Khirgiz Steppes, lying between the Ural Mountains and the Irkutsk
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Siberia
River and to the southwest of the Trans-Siberian Railway, to the northward of Russian Turkestan. Through this part of Siberia I passed twice on my visit to and journey from some mineral properties. This great region, larger than France, and lying in the more temperate portion of Siberia, is at present unfed by railways if we except the Trans-Siberian Railway to the northward and the Orenberg-Tashkent line on its southern confines.
Physiographically speaking, almost all of northern and west central Asia is a vast plain, densely forested towards the north, but treeless in the south. Near the Trans-Siberian Railway, the level meadows of the region through which I voyaged are unrelieved for many miles. The first low ridges which appear to the traveller from Petropavlosk against the southern horizon, heightened by the effect of mirage in that clear continental air, appear to vie in altitude and grandeur with the Himalayas. At various intervals small copses of Siberian pine or poplar break the dead monotony of the landscape. Southward from Akmolinsk, which is about 350 miles south of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the dead flatness is relieved at intervals by low ridges, while still farther south the region, broadly speaking, is hilly, and in places as one approaches the Chinese frontier-mountains, between these hills stretch wide plains like valleys.
Near the Trans-Siberian Railway the rainfall is roughly speaking about the same as the Canadian Northwest along the C.P.R., but it decreases going southwards, so that in the southern portion of the region I visited, arid conditions prevail. Thus the rivers are few in number and the more southerly ones are saline. Only the larger streams run continuously, and most of the water courses in summer consist of strings of disconnected pools lying in a shallow valley. Salt pans and swampy lakes are widely distributed across the steppes and at wide intervals occur lakes of magnitude. Balkash is a vast body of water, fresh at the edges but saline in the middle.
The soil varies greatly. Generally speaking, it is much better near the railway than farther south, where for wide stretches in the hills it is sandy. However, in places, judging by the crops which it produces, it must be extremely fertile. The climate is, of course, typically continental, and resembles that of central northwest Canada. However, I doubt if the worst blizzards of Saskatchewan equal in severity or fury those
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which in winter rage down the steppes or howl across the north- ern tundra, bringing death to any unfortunate man or beast who may not be able to get swift shelter.
The region has been the battleground of many people, and in many places one sees evidences of cultures and civilizations long since departed. Nearly the whole region was held by the Khirgiz with perhaps some Tartars in the north and Sarts in the .south. But gradually the immigration from European Russia has increased, and now their settlements dot the plain at wide intervals for hundreds of miles south of Akmolinsk, while they are slowly encroaching in a northerly direction from the Orenberg-Tashkent line. The great central part of the region is, however, still inhabited by nomadic Khirgiz who graze their vast herds of camels, horses, sheep, goats and cattle on the intervening plain and travel from place to place, moving from valley to valley, as the herbage is used up. I have at times seen a perfectly silent valley amongst the hills suddenly become a line of life as the flocks, headed by gaily colored and strangely dressed horsemen, advanced over the hills; and the caravans of camels, laden high with the families and household goods, wind through some rocky pass. Picturesque indeed was the sight in the brilliant Asiatic air, reminding one of Abraham of old as he moved with his flocks and herds, wives and concubines.
The provincial capital of all this vast region is Akmolinsk, a town of greatly varying population, but probably containing from 4,000 to 7,000 souls. As we approached it across the dead level treeless steppe, we were impressed with apparently improving conditions. The gilded churches, spires and minarets shine in the sun, while the arms of countless windmills show in •every direction. But once within, one is disillusioned, and the capital differs only in its size from the many smaller settlements on the steppes. The very broad streets laid out in regular squares are alternately sloughs of mud or dust, deep thorough- fares depending on the nature of the weather; while in winter they grind in places bare of snow or piled many feet high in huge drifts. Nearly all the buildings, save a few official ones, whether the gaily ornamented residence of a prosperous Tartar merchant, or the squat mud hut of the Siberian peasant, abut side to side and directly on to the streets, which form the common meeting ground of all classes.
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Siberia
Here and there one sees the wild looking Khirgiz riding their wiry little ponies, or laden camels with produce from India or China, groups of immigrants from Russia, en route to settle in the plains beyond; animals of all sorts wander at large, even along the main traffic routes, which form also the dumping grounds for all sorts of refuse. Sewage and waterworks do not exist, and the sole lighting of the streets is by very rare kerosene lamps. There is no telephone system, though the city is con- nected by telegraph with Petropavlosvsk, as are all the cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Altogether, Akmolinsk is a most unattractive place, alto- gether devoid of the air of antiquity which gives charm to so many Eastern cities, and with all the filth which goes to make them undesirable. It is the residence of the governor, the seat of the military who police the steppes, the seat of the judiciary who hastily try the innumerable cases which come before them, and of the many other officials connected with the Russian form of provincial administration.
In summer, one can travel almost anywhere across the steppes even in a wheeled vehicle, and the means of communication may be described as generally good. Roads do not exist, though trails, well marked by long use, connect Petropavlovsk on the railroad with the numerous poulhas between it and Akmolinsk, and thence radiate southward in various directions across the steppes. My route led from Akmolinsk about 200 miles a little east by south to one of the mines I examined, and thence in the same direction another 80 miles to another mine. From this point as a base, an expedition was made far into the Kulja country. In going there our course lay for miles along a portion of the old road from Kazan to China and India.
Even now along this ancient world's highway travel the caravans of camels laden with tea and silks, produce of the East to exchange for the commerce of Russia. I travelled night and day so far as it was possible and in all sorts of weather, sleeping in my carabok on my way in in summer and in my low flat sled, coming out in winter. It is a dreary mountainous journey, occupying from six to ten days, depending upon the state of the roads, the character of the weather, and even in a greater degree whether one is sufficiently strong or magnetic a person-
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ality to force, bribe or cajole the "hosian" into activity at the various stopping places.
These small settlements, miniature Akmolinsks, occur along the route at intervals of 15 to 50 miles, and give both variety from the unbroken monotony of the trail, but also a constant source of anxiety, lest one should not be able by fair or foul means to get horses to proceed onward, and thus be stuck for an indefinite period in a squalid hut at the caprice of a peasant.
These horses are generally wretched little creatures and one marvels how they can travel so rapidly through the ruts and over the boulders of the Siberian trails.
Arriving at a posulka, if you have sufficiently tipped your late driver, your provision basket is rushed into the ikon-bedecked guest chamber, where soon, if you have asked for it immediately on your arrival and have perchance been sufficiently agreeable, the samovar is brought in by a toothless crone, and soon you are drinking tea, while the said beldame, seated beside you, questions you about the state of the road, your health, if you are married, how many children you have, or plies you with questions about far away Russia, even farther Anglia, or quite impossibly remote, but most wonderful land of America, and begs to be allowed to taste, touch or even smell, your impedimenta.
The younger married women are always much too busy having children to be able to look after the comfort of the guests and the girls are always too much engaged in flirting with your late driver to bother about such trifles as your samovar. Mean- while you make enquiries about your horses for the onward journey. All smiles, the hosian announces that the horses are available and will soon be ready. If you are inexperienced, you are con- tented and finish your meal and go outside, expecting to see your troyka or three horse vehicle ready for the journey. No! the driver has just come in to eat his lunch. An hour passes and that gentleman saunters out. Surely we will go now. Nol the horses must be fed. Another hour passes. Then the horses are led to their harness — the splendid specimens you were told of, and you marvel how they manage to stand. You enter the carabok, or sled, as the case may be, and await instantaneous departure. Now comes the question of pay which you always arrange in advance. You offer the regulation price. Triple is demanded, and if you are rash enough to give way, four times
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the amount will be demanded of the stripped foreigner. You haggle over the price and meanwhile the horses are removed. Finally, maddened at the delay and the prospect of a night at the hovel, you agree to pay twice the amount you should, and at last get off after more tea or a long swig at the vodka bottle. The miserable horses, violently whipped and strongly imprecated, dart from the high-walled stable yard, often taking part of the gate with them, and for the first mile or two go at lightning speed. When the huts of the settlement are passed, they settle to a jog trot, with frequent long intervals for rest, until the lights of the next settlement are seen. Then the horses are whipped up and one flies to the post house amidst the cries of hooting men, women and children, barking dogs, hissing geese, quacking ducks and a medley of less familiar sounds. Perhaps you may arrive late at night with a storm raging. Then comes the most unpleasant part of the trip, one must sleep with many others on the vermin infested floor in the stalest possible atmosphere.
On the whole, I was agreeably surprised with the amount of comfort which marks the Siberian huts. I had imagined they lived in the utmost squalor, but the houses, generally, apart from the vermin, are fairly comfortable. They all contain a variety of household goods and are generally fairly furnished. The food supply is limited in variety, but fairly wholesome; the white wheat bread, or even the rye bread so commonly used, being to my mind delicious. Bread is the staple food, but they have also meat and vegetables, with plenty of tea. Vodka is far too much drunk by young and old, but drunkenness is no dis- grace— the reverse is the case. I remember an excellent young fellow being refused by a fair young Siberian because he was too temperate.
I was lost one night while a blizzard raged on my way to the railway. My driver by good fortune came across a tiny hut, led thither by a gleam of light from a solitary window. It was, I suppose, typical of many of the meanest huts in this lonely country. Its two rooms were of tiny proportions, and even their small dimensions were further dwarfed by the great stove, heated by kissick, which filled the entire wall between them. The outer room served as a kitchen, a sleeping place for the grand- father, a receptacle for the household stores and a housing place for various domestic animals. The inner room was the general
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Siberia
living apartment. It was occupied mainly by a bed on which slept a family of six and a small table on which various pro- visions were piled. The walls were spotlessly clean and fairly glistened with ikons, while the floor was filthy from refuse of all sorts having been flung there. To this humble home, however, we were cordially welcomed, though I marvelled at the time where my driver and myself could be stowed away. However, when the family retired to rest, I found a place had been reserved for me at their feet on a low oven extending from the stove, while my driver contented himself by lying, on the floor. It was a strange feeling when I awoke in the night to be almost able to touch the four walls around me and to see by the light of the candles burning before the ikons below me, mother and father on either side and the children tucked in between them. I have slept in Maori wharis in New Zealand, in Indian wig- wams in Canada, but I doubt if I was ever placed in more pecu- liar surroundings than in this far away Siberian hut where we were so fortunate as to find a shelter.
Immigration into this part of Siberia which I visited is very steadily, though somewhat slowly, advancing. When I discussed the Canadian system of immigration with representative Russians, they marvelled why we Canadians were making such efforts to secure settlement. "Would it not be better," I was asked, "to go more slowly, to encourage the best of your own people to migrate to your new and undeveloped lands, and thus keep them entirely to yourselves?"
In Siberia almost always a small colony settles together in a small village, which if it is large enough has its own church and school. The surrounding land is held in common, each family farming a certain section for one year only, the following year another section being allotted. Thus no one is supposed to have advantage over his neighbor by having for a continuous period superior soil. However, it proves to have a bad effect, as none sees the advantage of skilful tilling or preserving the fertility of the soil.
Fences there are none, the animals being herded and tended away from the cultivations in summer. Wheat, rye and potatoes are the principal crops, but sunflowers, poppies and melons are also grown at almost every settlement. Year by year, these settlements are being formed more and more remote from the
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Siberia
Trans-Siberian Railroad, and gradually the wide flung lands on which the Khirgiz flocks graze are being diminished. At present the government is planning several new railways which will do much to open up the country.
I marvelled in Siberia to see how many articles of American manufacture were used, including machinery of various kinds, cereals, canned goods, articles of clothing, etc. Just now, however, I found that American goods were rather unpopular, and it struck me that now would be the time for the Canadian merchants to step in and take their place. It delighted my heart to see such little used articles as Force and tangle-foot fly paper manufactured in Canada in a Siberian household, and I look forward to the day when ships plying to Vladivostock from Vancouver will carry such Canadian made articles as agricultural implements, boots and clothes suitable for a cold climate, saws, axes and similar tools. In this way, also, a bond of sympathy would be built up between ourselves and a people whose condition I believe to be surely though slowly improving, and who inhabit a country in some ways so much like our own in its physiographic character, and in the nature of the problems which its rigorous climate makes it face.
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[ February 23rd, 1912 ]
CANADA'S OPPORTUNITY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION
By R. TAIT MACKENZIE, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania.
IT was argued yesterday by Dr. R. Tait Mackenzie before the Canadian Club that now is the time for the Canadian people to realize the necessity for providing means of physical train- ing to the young and those not so young which will enable them to lay the foundations of strong healthy bodies and then keep them vigorous and healthy. In a chatty talk to the club members, Dr. Mackenzie emphasized the necessity of preserving the phy- sique of the race in order to retain its virility — to see that future generations should have the mens sana in corpore sano which was recognized by the ancients as a necessity of national development.
The gist of Dr. Mackenzie's address was that modern condi- tions had done away with the time when hard outdoor work for the young laid a foundation of physical strength which would last through a maturity of less healthful conditions. And unless some means were found to combat such a position he argued that there would ultimately come a reduction in the national physique which would react upon the progress of the people.
While many now living in cities were still trading upon the energies born of hard outdoor work in the open air done while they were young, Dr. Mackenzie pointed out that with the con- stant trend of people to the cities there was a growth of urban conditions where boys could not get this early hardening experi- ence— where if they tried to throw they were liable to hit a win- dow, and if they tried to climb they might be arrested.
This new condition, he said, had been realized by many cities in the United States, and they were now aiming at enormous
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Canada's Opportunity in Physical Education
expense to secure open spaces and playgrounds where the rising generations could gain the necessary physical experiences which would fit them later on to bear the strain and stress of modern life.
"And that is where the duty of the Canadian people seems to me to show up now," said he. "In Canada, where in the west cities almost spring up in a night, it seems to me that now is the time to lay aside these breathing spaces in the new cities and provide for a proper direction of the play of the young, so that they may be able to get out and gain a substitute for the hard work on the farm their fathers had with which to lay the found- ations of sound constitutions and good citizens."
Further than this Dr. Mackenzie said that there was need for an extension of physical education in the schools. The time the average boy or girl spent at the desk was out of all proportion to the time they should spend in outdoor and physical exercise to counteract the conditions of indoor study. He also urged that this should go further and that in the universities and col- leges there should be an absolute provision that students should give a certain time each week to physical training, as a necessary concomitant to their other work.
In this connection Dr. Mackenzie expressed regret that in the recent campaign for McGill there should have been no men- iton of improvement of physical training, and he hoped that in future this branch of the education of citizens would be better recognized.
There was a large attendance at the meeting, which was a special one in order to arrange for Dr. Mackenzie to speak, and many of his old friends of McGill were present.
176
[ February 24th, 1912 ]
THE CONSTITUTION OF JAPAN
By T. NAKAMURA
Imperial Consul-General, Japan.
I AM exceedingly delighted to have this opportunity of meet- ing the officers and members of the Canadian Club and avail myself of this occasion to express my hearty thanks for the great courtesy shown Admiral Togo by your kind invitation to one of your luncheons, during his recent visit to this country; I regret very much that owing to his unexpected indisposi- tion he was compelled to cancel his acceptance of your hospitality. I am sure none regretted this more deeply than Admiral Togo himself.
You have probably been interested in the newspaper reports of the very important occurrences in China during the past few months. These reports show that the Chinese people have been making a tremendous struggle to revolutionize by armed force their system of government, and having finally accomplished that object are now making preparations for the new regime. In view of these facts as well as our proximity to China, it may be interesting to study for a short time the system of government as we have it in Japan. I have therefore chosen as the subject of my address to-day the Constitution of Japan. As, however, it would be quite impossible to give a full description of our constitution and its working in so short a time as I have at my disposal I will confine myself to a mere synopsis with a view to giving you a brief outline of the subject.
As you are aware, the feudal system which had been in ex- istence in Japan for eight centuries, came to an end in 1868, when the Imperial power was restored to its ancient vitality. I will not enter here into details as to the forces which led up to this event, and will only say that this was a necessity in the con-
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ditions under which my country was placed, in order to meet the requirements of her national existence in accordance with modern progress.
As soon as the present Emperor assumed the reins of govern- ment in 1868 he assembled all the court nobles and feudal chiefs, and in their presence solemnly took the oath of the five articles, which were immediately proclaimed to the public. These arti- cles were as follows: —
I. Public councils shall be organized and all government affairs shall be decided thereby.
II. All classes, both the rulers and the ruled, shall with one common purpose in mind devote themselves to the advancement of the national interests.
III. All the civil and military officials and all the common people shall be allowed to realize their aspirations and work out their own futures as free men.
IV. All base customs of former times shall be abolished and justice and equity as they are universally recognized shall be followed.
V. Knowledge shall be sought for throughout the world and thus the foundations of the Empire shall be extended.
I mention these articles because of the fact that they were really the foundation of our constitutional ideas. The avowed object of these articles was to establish everything on such a basis as to regard wisdom and ability rather than birth as the true passport to office, and to carry out progressive reforms with the co-operation of the whole people. Such co-operation, however, cannot be successfully effected without having first of all the mass of the people prepared for it. For this reason, the govern- ment left nothing undone to educate the then rising generation in order to meet the requirements of the modern struggle for existence and supremacy. It was in 1874, just five years after the restoration, that a compulsory educational system was adopted throughout the country. Hand in hand with the work of education the government endeavoured most strenuously to influence the mass of the people in the direction of modern polit- ical ideals and ambition. They were slowly but steadily led to extend their sphere of vision beyond the limits of their village communities and to look upon the affairs of their districts and prefectures as their own, until finally they were able to interest
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The Constitution of Japan
themselves in the affairs of the whole state and nation, perhaps even more strongly than in the affairs of their own village.
Under such circumstances, just twelve years after the restor- ation, that is, in 1880, the laws concerning local or prefectural representative assemblies and Provincial representatives for the administrative business were promulgated. In the same year the law which originated communes on a modern basis of ex- tended self government was brought into force. In the following year, 1881, the Emperor gave notice of the approaching inaugur- ation of the constitutional regime. He allowed the people nine years as the period in which to prepare themselves for active participation in political life. But this notice was not only an invitation to the people to prepare themselves for active partic- ipation in political life, but a warning to the state officials to bring the central administration into harmony with modern con- stitutional ideals. Naturally, both elements freely availed them- selves of this idea during the period of preparation. Following that notice, various organizations were formed throughout the country, while on the part of the officials, far-reaching reforms were effected. In the meantime, the late Prince Ito, after study- ing modern constitutional conditions by order of the Emperor for nearly two years in Europe and America, submitted to the Em- peror a draft constitution for his country.
With regard to the part which our present Emperor played in the making of this constitution, I will quote for your information a statement of the late Prince Ito in his reminiscences concerning the framing of the constitution. He says, "The draft of the con- stitution submitted to His Majesty was handed over to the mature deliberation of the Privy Council. The Sovereign himself pre- sided over these deliberations and he had full opportunity to hear and to give due consideration to all conflicts of opinions, either conservative or progressive, expressed on those occasions. I be- lieve nothing justifies more strongly the progressive genius of our August Master than the fact that in spite of the existence of a powerful undercurrent of ultra-conservative nature in the Council and also in the country at large, His Majesty inclined almost invariably to liberal and progressive ideas. As a result, we have been able to secure our constitution such as it exists to-day." In connection with this opinion, I would like to say
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The Constitution of Japan
here that the well-known devotion of our people to the Emperor, of whom we are very proud, is based upon no ordinary ground.
It was in 1889, just eight years after the Emperor's notifica- tion, that that constitution was finally proclaimed with most solemn ceremonies. In the following year, 1890, precisely nine years after that notification, the constitution was brought into force with the convening of the first parliament composed of members elected by the people. And we Japanese people point proudly to this constitution as the only charter of its kind volun- tarily given by a sovereign to his subjects. This constitution of ours is composed of seven chapters, containing altogether seventy- six articles. The first chapter refers to the Emperor; the second to the rights and duties of the subjects; the third refers to Par- liament; the fourth to Ministers of State and the Privy Council; the fifth to the Judicature; the sixth to finance, and the seventh to supplementary rules. I will refer to some of the most essential points, summarizing them under three heads.
First, certain powers are vested in the Emperor, such as the declaration of war and the establishment of peace, the making of treaties, the appointing and dismissing of officials, the making of loans, the conferring of titles of nobility, etc.
Second, to the people are guaranteed, amongst other things, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech in public meetings, in- violability of property and domicile and correspondence, security from arrest or punishment except by due process of law, per- manence of judicial appointments and all essential elements of religious liberty.
Third, the full administrative authority is vested in the Im- perial Parliament. Without its consent no tax can be made or remitted or increased, nor can public money be expended. The Budget must also receive its endorsement.
Before concluding my address it may not be out of place to give here a brief description of the organization of our Parliament. It is composed of two Houses: the House of Lords, commonly called the Upper House, and the House of Representatives, or Lower House. The organization of the Upper House is much more complicated than that of your Senate, it being much like the British House of Lords. Its members are of three classes — hereditary, elective and those nominated by the Emperor. The hereditary members have to be Princes of the blood, Princes
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The Constitution of Japan
and Marquises. Princes of the blood when they reach the age of twenty years, Princes and Marquises, when they reach the age of twenty-five, are eligible to sit in the House of Peers. The elec- tive members are Counts, Viscounts and Barons, over twenty- five years of age, and chosen by their own respective classes. Their term is for seven years, and their number is limited by law.
The members nominated by the Emperor are of two classes: First are those who are appointed from amongst men of learning and public service. They must be over thirty years of age and their term is for life. The number of these members is also limited by law. The nominated members of the second class are representatives of the highest tax payers of each of forty-five prefectures, one from each prefecture. They must be over thirty years of age and are nominated by the Emperor after being elected from amongst the fifteen highest tax payers in each pre- fecture. Their term is for seven years. The total number of the members of the House of Peers is at present 381; composed of 14 Princes of the blood, 16 Princes, 31 Marquises, 17 Counts, 73 Viscounts, 94 Barons, and 136 nominated members.
The House of Representatives is composed of members who must be over thirty years of age and elected in electoral districts. Except for the age limit, no other qualification is required of the candidates for the membership. But the electors are required to have property qualifications, paying taxes to a certain small amount, while they must be over twenty-five years of age, and must also have had their abode for more than one year in the electoral district prior to the framing of the list of electors. Our election law also stipulates that the electors must be Japanese male subjects. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we are not yet SQ far advanced as to allow women to vote.
The first number of members of the House of Representatives is 379 and their term is for four years. With regard to the power of the two Houses, there exists no difference at all. With regard to the Budget, our constitution stipulates that it shall be laid first before the House of Representatives; but except for this there is no difference in their powers. The Upper House may examine, amend and vote on the Budget received by them after its passage by the Lower House; but whenever the Upper House has had occasion to exercise this power, certain members of the Lower House usually protested. But the Upper House has gen-
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erally prevailed in the exercise of that function. I have no doubt, however, that the recent action taken by the British Parliament in solving the problem of what has been called "the veto" will have some influence upon the Japanese people.
Our Parliament must sit at least once a year and it does so ordinarily for three months. This term of annual session is fixed by the constitution. It is very short as compared with that of your Parliament, and you would naturally wonder how num- erous matters could be dealt with in so short a time. The general explanation is that in our Parliament the members do not devote so much time to oratory as those of some other countries. In our Parliament each measure of importance has to be submitted to a committee, and not until its support has been received does serious debate take place. But in nine cases out of ten the com- mittee's report determines the attitude of the House, and speeches therefore are felt to be more or less superfluous. I think that that is proceeding along the right direction, and as a result busi- ness is done in ordinary cases with celerity. Another explanation is that by our parliamentary rules a limitation of time is imposed upon the debate on the Budget. Therefore, the House has to curtail its deliberations in this connection. Sometimes the Lower House fails to accomplish this on account of disagreement be- tween itself and the Government. In such cases, however, the Government may in accordance with a stipulation of the con- stitution carry out the Budget of the preceding year.
As already stated, our first Parliament was completed in 1890, when the constitution was brought into force. As a constitu- tional monarchy, therefore, we are just twenty-two years old. And on looking back over this period of nearly a quarter of a century during which we have had the Constitution, I can say that, in spite of its shortcomings, the experiment has been on the whole a success. I am fully convinced that the position which Japan now occupies as a world-power is a result of the represen- tative government which we so wisely adopted, which has brought about the unification of our people.
We are also, however, fully aware of the fact that our con- stitutional government is still, in some respects, in its infancy as compared with yours. You are a born race of constitutionalists and we have many things to learn from you in this respect. The recent political battle here which I was so fortunate as to witness
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partly in this country was an inspiration to me and gave me much food for reflection. I was greatly impressed by the sturdy and aggressive manner in which your two great political parties contended for what each thought to be its interests. But, as all people know, even progress is not without its evils. And in my opinion under the constitutional system of government the real danger lies in the usurpation of the patriotic by the party spirit.
But so long as a country has such political parties under the guidance of such sane and distinguished men as your two great leaders, one must feel confident that it will avoid these two ex- tremes of political stagnation and constitution-wrecking which ruin all national advancement and its future progress must be assured. In this connection I tender you my sincere congratu- ations.
On our part, we have in Japan so-called political parties, but they are still in their infancy; it will take many years before we may have such powerful organizations as you have now. Since the birth of our constitution, we have never had a government which represented solely one political party. This is due partly to the fact that none of our political parties has been so well organized or developed as to be confident of its ability to control alone the affairs of the country. But the main cause I am in- clined to attribute to a strong opposition to the formation of party government by a group of men known as Bureaucrats, who believe that the country ought to be governed by a bureau- cracy; and in this idea, probably following the German method of administration, over ten years after the opening of our first Parliament a bitter strife was carried on between the bureaucrats and the political parties in which the former were uniformly victorious.
But since the formation by the late Prince Ito in 1900 of a political party called the "Constitutional Party " the situation has changed somewhat. This party, having been organized by so able and distinguished a man, has secured predominance in the Lower House at every election, and no one since then has been able to form a stable government without its support. Conse- quently, during the last decade there has generally been a coali- tion government composed of the Bureaucrats and Constitutional parties. This may be regarded as evidence of the growing in- fluence of the political party system in Japan. At present, how-
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ever, the so-called Bureaucrats, on account of their predominance in the Upper House, are so strong that, in spite of the safe majority which the Constitutional Party now has in the Lower House, the latter cannot form a government solely from amongst its own members. For instance, our present Premier is the leader of the Constitutional Party, but he has in a Cabinet of ten ministers only four members of his party, including himself.
It can therefore be seen that our political parties, while grow- ing in power, are still in a transition condition. As just now stated, the so-called Bureaucrats have adopted the German method of administration, while the Constitutional Party leans in its ideas toward the British methods. It goes without saying, however, that the latter is gaining in power as well as in popu- larity. Besides the Constitutional Party, we have two smaller parties. The Nationalist Party, has the same ideas of adminis- tration as the Constitutional Party, but differs from it in regard to some individual administrative questions. The Central Party usually supports the Bureaucrats. In this connection, however, I might add that while there has been and still is a constant strife between the so-called Bureaucrats and the other political parties past experience has shown that it has usually been the case for both elements to sink out of sight in any national emer- gency.
This shows conclusively that our political leaders rightly understand where the real danger, as already pointed out, lies under a constitutional form of government. I might, therefore, say in conclusion, that Japan has every faith in the form and substance of our present constitution and that we as a people are confident that the stability and healthy progress of our con- stitutional government is now fully assured.
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[ March 4th, 1912 ]
SOCIAL CO-OPERATION IN A GREAT CITY
By F. H. MCLEAN
General Secretary of the National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity.
TWO of the pleasantest years of my life were spent in Mont- real in connection with the Charity Organization move- ment. I am glad to realize that I am still acting with the great charity organization of which you are members. It is more and more being recognized to-day that co-operation is necessary, not only in politics, but in all other walks of life in which organi- zation tends to yield better results. It is possible, in the move- ment with which I am connected, that, in one or two directions, an opportunity for advancement may be found in co-operation on the civic side; but efforts such as these will not leave us much better off without co-operation elsewhere. The individualistic basis of charitable effort has given way to groups of persons act- ing together because interested in the same project. One advan- tage of this is that it is easier for them to determine, with regard to their pet project, if there are not more important things wait- ing to be done. This co-operative movement is growing up in cities generally, even in the small ones. I am speaking more of United States conditions, but there are one or two Canadian cities in which the same thing is apparent also. It seems to me that Montreal is not essentially different from United States cities in its need of co-operation. In towns where no effective organization is working for the purpose, groups of churches in- terested in the welfare of the city are acting together as an agency for these improvements for the amelioration of the con- dition of their fellow citizens which they think most required.
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Social Co-operation in a Great City
This brings me to the consideration of an aspect of the ques- tion, in which there is a certain amount of danger, owing to the need of a more effective co-operation. There is a city f of sixty thousand people in the south-eastern part of the United States, where three or four hundred men are being cared for every night. The organization there is interested in the care of the homeless chiefly. I may as well tell you the name of the city: it is Jackson- ville, Florida. They expend a hundred thousand dollars a year for the sole purpose of looking after homeless men. There is another city with one quarter so bad that the local charity or- ganization is combining to eliminate its houses as homes for the poor, and have the homes of the latter so located that the entire character of this quarter may be changed; and instead of being a poor residential quarter, places of business may take the place of the residences they are seeking to do away with. The ques- tion is, should such matters be their first consideration in that city, or might better results be obtained in some other direction?
There is a certain little city in Wyoming where it was thought they must adopt the playground system. There are plenty of vacant spaces there, which perhaps encouraged the idea, but the idea was chiefly that of a group of men who had read about the system till they felt they must plank it down in the community in which they lived. The sort of policy that a city may prefer to plank down, or have planked down at any time by the com- mittee that directs its policy, is likely to be a policy that has become more and more discredited during the last ten years, and is being discredited all the time. It is not a question of individual responsibility. It is no longer, as it was in years gone by, when those interested in child welfare, or in any other line of philan- thropic effort, just went away and did what they could. It is no longer a question of what programme people like to undertake, but the programme must be one of work that wants doing. The result of so much effort made in the past has been just like a patchwork quilt. This does not apply only to the great cities. The wasted efforts of small cities all over the continent would probably show greater losses, as a whole, than in the larger cities. It is a mistake to regard this loss as a necessary evil, because ten or twenty years ago, interest in co-ordinate effort had not been worked up. People felt that they had only to give gener- ously and the work would be done. Since that period the public
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have awakened to the danger of things being only half done, and that there are some things it might be well to let wait a while, and then have done at once. There has also been a tendency in the past for towns to boast of what they were doing and to com- pare it with what their neighbors did. The attitude of some cities has been like that of the Los Angeles man who always said he never liked boasting. He told a friend from elsewhere that for his part he never boasted that California grew anything bigger and better than it could be grown elsewhere. "But you grow bigger watermelons in California than anywhere else?" said his friend. "No," replied the Los Angeles man, "the vines grow so fast along the ground that they grub up the watermelons before they get ripe." The social growth should not be so fast that the vines do not give the melons a chance to get ripe. To allow them time to gain strength slowly would be a better policy.
It is no longer a question of individual interest, but how to arrive at a social programme co-ordinating the claims of all groups. Co-operation should be attempted in the way I indicate; it should be seen how the various needs require pushing and in what order. The people should be educated to a slow but steady increase of subscriptions, year by year, as their city grows. This is far better than a spasmodic response to appeals one year, followed most likely by a falling off the next. Things which are necessary should be done at once and those which are not should be put off, if need be, for ten years. There is some suggestion of a repressive policy in an association of persons interested in various things considering together a programme which com- prises all lines of work and agreeing as to what may be deferred. If such an association starts by saying, "We must come to an agreement," it argues a certain degree of unselfishness. When putting off a pet scheme, perhaps for years, people get to realize that they are not merely dealing with their own money, but are, in a very real sense, trustees for the charitable impulses of the whole country.
There is one method of co-operative influence which is purely moral and not coercive, though in the United States they have found they sometimes need other forms more repressive, though not severely so. The policy pursued by the commercial agencies of endorsing certain charities is the method I refer to. The agen- cies review applications for aid from all the societies, and pass
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judgment as to whether the work of the society has been well or ill managed. The agency gives cards of endorsement to those charities of which they approve; or sends cards on which they express an opinion as to the value of the work done by all bodies asking for money in that city. This influence is partly repressive of efforts which can await the larger growth of the city, yet the method is one that does not come down with the iron hand of a charity organization, but is morally repressive when required. The groups themselves are not able to compare the respective needs of tuberculosis patients, child welfare movements, and playgrounds, without the help of these social reports and advice. People who will not work in with others, feel the effect in the end of such action as that taken by the commercial agencies. Moral influence may first be tried, but if that fails, the agency has the right to say, "We cannot advise contributions, because we do not see any harmony between the work of this society and that of other charitable bodies." This has a great effect, for business men are often willing to increase their contributions, but do not know whether they should support one society more liberally than another; as, without advice, they have no knowl- edge of the relative value of the various systems that appeal to them for aid.
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[ March nth,
CANADA FROM EAST TO WEST
By R. B. BENNETT, M.P., Calgary
I ESTEEM it a great privilege to have the opportunity of addressing this gathering, because all of us, whether of the East or West, know that Montreal is a great city, to which we look for inspiration — and often for money. I come from a very young city, not as big as Montreal; but we hope some day to be. The growth of Calgary makes it in some respects perhaps the most wonderful city in America, certainly in Canada.
This is an age of unrest. The struggle of Democracy to make itself felt — the desire of the people to govern according to their opinions and sovereign will, that is the unrest I wish to speak about to-day. We see it everywhere. It has manifested itself in Portugal, where it has changed a monarchy into a republic, and in Spain. We see it in Mexico and in the Chinese revolution, while there was another revolution recently in England whereby the whole constitution of the country was changed. You find it in the recent changes in the leadership of the old and established parties in England — the middle classes are supplanting the aris- tocracy in the Conservative Party. In my opinion, this continual desire and struggle on the part of the democracy to make itself felt is but an indication of the sovereign will of the people clamor- ing for effective representation.
In the West on this continent you find the same struggle in a different form. In Mexico the great struggle was against the tyranny or autocracy of the man who ruled it for so many years. In the United States there is the recent insurgent movement, and in Canada particularly the movement in the West — a move- ment, I am sorry to say, directed against the East — a movement touching the tariff and transportation and matters of that kind. That is the way in which the spirit of unrest in the western part
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Canada from East to West
of the King's Canadian Dominion is trying to give expression to the people's sentiments and thoughts.
And you find it in the East also. I notice that some journals have been coming out with a vigorous denunciation of the Privy Council system. Did you ever stop to think that the only bul- wark to save the rights of the Provinces against the Federal Gov- ernment is the Privy Council? Did you ever think of what we owed to the Privy Council in that regard? I find attacks made against that body by men, who, I think, cannot possibly have considered calmly what the effect would be — because it is, with the Governor-General, the only link with our cential body. Thus the only link that binds Canada to the Motherland is now de- nounced because some, of its judgments did not suit some of the people. That is a manifestation of a sentiment which is world wide. In the United States there is the agitation for the recall of judges. The other day Mr. Tregelles, of the Farmers' Union of Alberta, said that the time had come for the separation of the East and West, and that he was prepared to carry on an agita- tion in that direction. I find somewhat the same thing in a speech by Mr. Ames the other night, when he said that the time might not be very far distant when the farmers of the West might boycott the manufacturers of the East. All these things are facts that confront us. It is no longer a theory, but a condi- tion; and we as Canadians and you as citizens of Montreal must face these problems and see what they are and why they arise. And if you manufacturers of Montreal are worthy of your tradi- tions and ancestry, you will find a solution for them which will not disrupt confederation, but will bind East and West together by stronger bonds than ever.
For these things are bad. There is not a young or old man, business or professional man who does not believe with me that the worst thing that can happen to this young Dominion is an agitation of East against West, and that there is nothing worse for the country than that you of the East should be lacking in your appreciation of the destiny and greatness of the West. The West is not the whole of Canada, but the potentiality of Canada's destiny is wrapped in it. There the destiny of confederation must be worked out, and the problems arising will call for the best minds and work.
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Canada from East to West
And why? It is because we have, first of all, a vast area of fertile land. A trip to Toronto is a night's journey; but it is nearly as far as that from Edmonton to Calgary, while Fort McMurray is 350 miles from Edmonton and 550 miles north of Calgary; 150 miles south there is the boundary; for 800 miles to the east from the foot hills there is that vast country extending to the head of the lakes. That is the condition. A fertile plain of 218,000,000 acres. That means almost nothing to the average man. But when I say that in that vast area there is not ten per cent, under production, you can understand what that means. When you think that for every one hundred acres of that 218,- 000,000 only five, six or seven are under cultivation, you can get some conception of what the future must unfold in that land, and think of the size of it in relation to that of other countries. In the country east of the Rockies between there and the Great Lakes, there are three Provinces each twice as large as Great Britain and as large as France. That conveys little to the ordi- nary mind, but it gives some appreciation of the possibilities. There is a vast fertile empire — in fact one of the great difficulties that confronts us in the West is that it is easy to get rich there. It is too easy for people to accumulate fortunes they do not earn. Materialism has a tremendous grip on the people in the West. Did you ever think what made Canada and the United States great in the past? In New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario they had to cut down the trees and make homes in the wilderness and burn out the stumps in order to get small crops here and there. But the men going to the vast plains of the West simply turn over the soil and get the crop. Money is too easy to make, the conditions are too simple. I know you will agree with me that difficulty is the condition of lasting success for the individual or for the nation.
The United States has become a great country because the influence of the Puritan Fathers swept west of the Alleghanies, and leavened the national life for new privations and struggles and toil. We can have no lasting greatness in this country so long as we have these abounding times of national prosperity. I do not want hard times, that would be bad for my party. But I say this, and you who read the history of the human race must agree with me that it is a history of the achievements of the great men who made the great empires: you must agree
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Canada from East to West
with me that it is possible to have conditions too easy for those who accept the benefits, and that is what we find in the West.
One of the reasons for the general spirit of unrest is that the farmer sees the speculator growing rich subdividing into town lots and unloading them upon the unsuspecting public and thereby getting very large profits. The farmer toils and reaps to get his reward and he cannot understand the immense profits in which he does not participate. Then there is another thing you must keep in mind when speaking of the West, that is the wide expanse over which there are scattered so many people. It is sparsely populated. There are not in those three provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, twice as many people as there are on the Island of Montreal. Did you ever think that in the cities, towns and villages of those Western provinces, there is probably a fourth of their population, so that there are 1,200,000 people covering a territory of 750 square miles, or six times the size of the United Kingdom? Pause a moment, and you will think of the seriousness of the problem. A man finds himself with a neighbour perhaps ten miles away, and then gradually a little colony grows up twenty miles away from a railway. They grow their wheat and take it to the elevator in the fall for a very long haul. Then they call for a railway and demand a school and post office and such facilities as are needed. I cannot even try to make you see that country, but it is a country six times the size of the United Kingdom and Ire- land with a population less than that of one corner of London.
Think of the wealth and traffic those people produce, the fertility of the soil, the crops and cattle. This past year, 1911, it will make not less than $300,000,000. Your prosperity is wrapped up in the prosperity of the West. Ours is to some ex- tent linked with yours. But as we prosper, so will you; and your great development in the East of Canada is bought with the price of our success in the West. Do not think that the city of Montreal is prospering just because it is Montreal, or that Toronto is prospering just because it is Toronto. You are prospering and the East is prospering because these plains are producing something like £300,000,000, a good part of which comes here and to other eastern cities.
Now a step further. What is the cause of the unrest? I want to get this condition before you, namely, the kind of popu-
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Canada from East to West
lation we are getting. Mr. Ames dwelt upon that the other evening and I will deal with it shortly. It is not the weak men that go West or the men without ideas. It is usually, speaking from history, the man willing to take a chance, who sees some- thing before him, who has possibly an imagination and is willing to take the risk of leaving home just as Abraham of old journeyed from the land of his fathers and started his new settlement. So to-day the young men who are willing to leave the old home towns and journey west or north are the kind of people we have been attracting to our country. We in the West have been attracting four kinds of settlers. We have drawn them from eastern Canada, from Great Britain, from Continental Europe and the United States. And in the western provinces, Sas- katchewan and Alberta, by far the largest population comes from the United States. Mr. Ames the other evening showed the figures. It is sufficient to say that during the last six years 54>^ per cent, of all the settlers to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba came from the United States, i8>£ per cent, from Continental Europe and 27^ Per cent- from the British Isles. In Alberta, where I live, there are less than 400,000 souls and the area is twice that of the United Kingdom. It has drawn to it from the United States during the last five years 142,000 settlers; 74 >£ per cent, of all the settlers who have come into Alberta during the last five years came from the United States. In Saskatchewan the proportion is less and in Manitoba still less. What kind of people were they and what are their attributes? They are largely men from the central and northern parts of the United States, the men who built up the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska and the other agricultural states. They brought with them a violent antipathy to the Eastern States, a violent hatred of Wall Street and of all those factors which the maga- zines class as "the interests." They brought with them a sense that the tariff unduly taxed them, and that they had to pay a larger proportion of the income of the United States than they should, and they swept north to make themselves new homes, bringing with them a love for republican democracy and a hatred for monarchical democracy. In fact, one gentlemen who came there told me he was going to take his little girl away from the school because he did not like the idea of her being taught about kings. This is a real abiding hatred against England, because
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Canada from East to West
it has been inherited since 1775. And it has been kept up by their school books, especially since the war of 1812. If you have ever read these, you will find that the main part the Cana- dians took in that war was in hiding behind stumps and the bush. But they are splendid settlers, God-fearing and liberty- loving men, with the same high regard for education that we have, and the same love of law and order: men used to pioneer conditions and accustomed to roughing it. These men who made the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska will make Canadians, but they will not make Britishers. They bring with them an inherited antipathy to Great Britain and her institutions as descendants of the men who have the same story to tell of 1775 and 1812. They think that Great Britain is a tyrant and that wherever her flag flies it means an iron heel oppressing the people. We have to unfold to them a more glorious vision of liberty than they ever dreamed of.
And what is more they respond to it. They see in the Canadian West a system of government with strong central control: railways going west and east and north and south under strong central control: they see a banking system perhaps not elastic enough to meet all their desires, but strong and under powerful central control. All this does a great deal to link the East and the West. The branch bank system has done its part to unite East and West and give us a continuity we would not otherwise have. They see our system of government with cabinets directly responsible to the people. They see that governments may fall and they see that cabinets cannot devise policies unless with the support of the people's representatives in parliament. But remember these settlers are past the school age so that our school education does not reach them as it does the younger people. All that we can hope for is to give them such a system of government as will teach them that justice is sure and certain, and that a criminal will be hunted out to the last cent of our resources. The other day we had one of the greatest lessons we ever got in Alberta, to show that criminals are sure, eventually, to be run down by our splendid mounted police. A man had been murdered: the mounted police traced the criminal through the United States, and just a year after the first remains were found, the murderer was hanged. It
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Canada from East to West
taught the settlers that British justice was sure and certain, and that wholesome lesson sank deep into their hearts.
I have a great and abiding regard for the institutions of the United States. I was the other day at Portland, Oregon, and passed the old cemetery there: I saw almost in decay the grave of a man who at one time shaped the political destinies of that state — all that was mortal of Senator Mitchell lay buried there. He had been hunted because of alleged crime committed in land transactions, had been found guilty and duly punished: there lay his body in that neglected grave. We in Canada talk of corruption amongst men in high places. Have we ever unraveled any of them? Think if you are doing any good talking about what men may do and then letting them go un- punished. That sort of thing is having effect upon the American settler. He hears charges of graft against men in parliament which are referred to parliamentary committees, and then the talk goes on, and some other interest is strong enough to save a man from investigation. It is men like you who should make that sort of thing impossible in Canada. If you had any con- ception of your obligations to the body politic you would see to it that men in high places if guilty, no matter who they may be, should be exposed as was that senator who died in jail and was buried in that neglected grave-yard.
That is why I have a large regard for the institutions of the United States. Go to Wisconsin and see how they have cleaned out graft there, as well as in other states. To find a similar thing in Canada you have to go back to the 8o's when Sir John Thompson sent a man in high place to jail for malfeasance in office. We are oppressed in this country with party — we are cursed with it, when it comes to the right of the people to have clean and honest administrations of their affairs. I am a good party man, but I say this, and if I remain I propose to say it in Parliament, that we cannot and must not permit charges to be made against public men which we believe to be true, and then when we succeed to office leave the matter alone and say that because of other interests we are not going to clean them up. Let us clear them out and if it strikes our party, so much the worse for our party and so much the better for Canada.
These are the opinions and views and needs of the Western people, with these antipathies and hatreds of the East, and the
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Canada from East to West
idea of collectivism as a doctrine instead of individualism. It is a mistake to destroy individual efforts by reducing the oppor- tunities of the individual. As I read history, the Anglo-Saxons have become what they have, and our Empire what it is, be- cause our people themselves founded the outposts of empire everywhere, because we have stimulated individual activity everywhere along right and proper lines. In the land in which I live, I have preached the doctrine of efficient and proper regu- lation of individual effort. In other words, the thing to be striven for is that individual effort must be aimed at and regu- lated along right and proper lines. An educated man is a man with passions under the control of his will, and his will looking Godwards. The people in this country should stimulate indi- vidual effort while controlling it under proper government regulations. That is my idea of why it is better to have in- dividual working out of many of our problems rather than to say that the government should do everything. But these people who come from the United States hold the doctrines of paternal government, collectivism, hatred of the money powers, a strong idea of the aggression of railroads. You have heard of the railways invading the rights and the legislatures of the States, and even their courts. You perhaps know the history of their work in California. I know something of the history of the Southern Pacific; it was the greatest political power of any state, controlling not only the government but the judges. That is the idea the settlers bring with them; we must try to show them that in this country such conditions do not and will not prevail.
These being the conditions, what are the great grievances of the West against the East? I will give you three of them; I have not time for more. They are first, transportation; second, markets; third, taxation. The transportation is a tremendously serious one. I am not foolish enough to try to elucidate that this afternoon, but will point out that if you can visualize the farmer sixty miles from a railway, growing crops in summer and bringing them in over poor roads, starting out and not reaching the railway till the next day or the day after, you will perhaps understand. You may say, ''Why is he so far off when there is plenty of other land nearer?" The fact is that he is there, and you are here. Look at this transportation problem fairly.
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Canada from East to West
You are business men and have the advantage of transporta- tion by rail and water. We have little water transportation in the three provinces, practically nothing as yet. It may be possible from Edmonton to Winnipeg; this was what Alexan- der Mackenzie dreamed of. We may be able to get a nine foot channel of water from there down. Engineers say it is possible and Mackenzie thought it was. But it is rail not water by which our crops are brought to the head of the Lakes, and during several months of the year these are frozen up so that you can not move a bushel. In summer we have the rail, and we hope some day to open up the Hudson Bay route. Then the Panama Canal will come, and I invite you business men to consider calmly what that will mean to Montreal. Remember that every time you permit your country to be exploited by a railway corporation, and let them load it with fixed charges higher than they should be and with watered stock, you have to that extent menaced the greatness of Montreal; because when the Panama Canal is built, crops from as far west as Moose Jaw will be sent via the Pacific to the Isthmus and thus find their way to the mar- ket in England. Our grain market is still the United Kingdom. We are selling more and more to the United States. Last year we sold them $859,000.00 worth; but the rest goes to the United Kingdom, and that should be kept in mind.
How did you ever let the G.T.P. cost so much? I am not talking politics, but I ask you why as business men with horse sense and intelligence — why did you let a road be built with fixed charges of four thousand dollars a mile? Did you ever think what those fixed charges mean? The ratio between net earnings and operating expenses is 60 to 40. You must get the earnings, and these tremendous fixed charges means that you can't do it. We men in the West do not understand how you permitted it to be done, and no one else does.
There are the three outlets I have mentioned. Then you come to the all rail route ; we have only one now. Despite fifteen years of active agitation, we have to-day only one all rail route through to the West. The C.P.R. is doing the best it can with its single track north of the Great Lakes, and you know how insufficient that is. But the Grand Trunk with its line running to North Bay wanted an outlet, and that was not granted. So we have the abortion of one part of the line run-
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ning to Quebec and stopping there because even working night and day the Quebec bridge could not be finished for seven years — or the lifetime of a tie. And what will happen the road on the other side of the bridge then, with its ties rotted and its rails rusted ?
This is no.t politics, it is a business talk. There is your one rail route to move the crops. Is it any wonder that the West is unrestful and agitating? There is your second rail route. It stops at Quebec for seven years, with the system rotting in Nova Scotia for want of business which cannot get across. You know it, and as hard headed business men you are supposed to protect the country's exchequer. You are doing it well.
There is the transportation problem. Now a step further and see what it means to these men in the West. The man in Calgary says all he has he could ship to the far Yukon. Why not? Spokane and Seattle can ship there. The man in Winni- peg says, "Why can't I ship my stuff south by the Hill line to Minneapolis and Duluth, with a shorter run and cheaper rate" — which is not true. But that is the standing cry of these men — why cannot they do these things? You have a large duty in that respect, and if I have one message to you to-day, it is that the desire of the West is not that we should separate from the East, but that we are looking for fair play, for just and equitable treatment. We ask you to assist us to get the highest possible price for our products, to the end that national wealth may be added to, and not the wealth of the individual. We ask that you should do what you can to reduce the fixed charges on railroads, by seeing that money voted for railroads all goes to railroads, and not to advance the interests of individuals. Do not let them water railroad stock — that is my word to you on transportation. Do not let the Canadian people build railroads which are really for two distinguished gentlemen for their own profits. We have done enough of that, let us stop and try to see that problem as it is.
Now as to markets. We have three of them: the local, the Canadian, and the foreign markets. The local market is not very much because we have not been able to build any manu- facturing plants so as to get a great consuming population. The Canadian market takes about $20,000,000 of our crop. And then there is the foreign market, the United Kingdom and other customers. The United Kingdom takes a great part of
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our crop, but there are those men from the south who want to sell in Minneapolis. The price is higher there, especially for their flax and barley, and they want to sell it there. If I may say so, it was because it was a problem in patriotism that I was opposed to reciprocity. You have that body of settlers I have described looking constantly to the south for their markets. They know nothing of Montreal or Quebec and have never heard anything of Toronto; but they know all about Minneapolis and Duluth.
As an illustration I may point out that the gentleman on the Calgary Board of Trade who presented the resolution favor- ing reciprocity said he did so because he thought it was the right thing. He had never even visited eastern Canada. He came from Spokane and became a naturalized British subject, but he knew nothing at all about eastern Canada. Do you realize what that means? You are right when you say that you know more about the West than the West knows about the East. But you have that agitation in the West about markets; the peo- ple say that they want to go to Spokane, Minneapolis, Duluth and so on, that they would do better business with a shorter haul and higher prices. They say that that is the real situation, and with relation to flax and barley it is true. Very often flax is the first product the settler puts in, and the flax market is 25 per cent, to 20 per cent, better in the States. We have practi- cally no home market for it, because we have no flax or linseed oil mills. Nor have we any malting industry to dispose of our barley. Think of what that means. Are you in the East prepared to make it possible for the men of the West to willingly undergo some sacrifice to build up a nation, or sacrifice our national existence to the markets of the south? That is your problem. Are you prepared to assist those men in the West, so as to devel- op a fine market for our home products, and bring prices to the standard they should reach, or are we to wreck the Confed- eration in twain? It seems to me we might hope to do that, if you great manufacturers would do something to assist in establishing manufacturing plants in the West, even though your margin of profits might not be so large, because labor is high in the West. Will you do something to help establish great industrial centres in the west of Canada as they have in the Western States?
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Then as to taxation. Nothing so tends to make men so discouraged and disheartened and unrestful as an uneven system of taxation, whether it be local or any other. Keep this maxim in mind, that all taxation should be borne in proportion to the ability of the man to pay it. The man in the West says he is paying too much. Last fall I went into the homes of these American farmers and talked to hundreds of them. I will give you the reply of a man which is typical of them all. He said, "Mr. Bennett, I came from Minnesota, and I can buy stuff from the store there and bring it in here for the price I have to pay for it here. The local cost is the price in the United States plus freight and duty." How long will they stand for that do you think? I am talking to you straight — that is a very serious problem. Do you mean to tell me that is just and fair, that on every article used in the West the price should be exactly the United States price plus freight and duty? If a protective tariff does that, it does not do its duty and works harm — and I am a red hot protectionist too. But I am a pro- tectionist who believes with John Stuart Mill that a protective tariff need not keep forever at the same rate when it has served its purpose. For fifteen years we have had a government which talked free trade and practised protection. Now we propose both to preach and practise protection, but with a fair and reasonable idea of finding exactly how taxation will be felt by every person, and this will be done by the work of the tariff commission.
I will not talk politics, but put yourself in the position of that Western farmer. Go to buy an agricultural implement, ask the price; then go to the town in the States you came from, get the price on the same implement there: add to it the freight and duty and you have the cost in your own town. It is not always so perhaps, but that is the impression; and they say that surely after fifteen or twenty-five years of protection you can manu- facture so as to undersell that a little bit — am I not right? And these Western farmers bear that burden in its entirety. When their flax would bring 20 cents a bushel more on the other side of the line, and their barley a higher price if they could get it in, should not the Canadian manufacturer make some sacrifice to build up the nation? That is the point I want to put to you. There is the case, because there are three things that tie the
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East and West together — the tariff, the railroad and sentiment. They are the ties between East and West, and the sentiment by reason of new population is becoming less, as the men from the lower provinces are being outnumbered by men from the United States. The man from Great Britain has some of this sentiment, but he knows little of Canadian history and of our traditions, and he knows little of our sacrifices. The sentiment therefore becomes less as the country fills up.
The railways exercise a powerful influence tying the East and West. Their Christmas excursions sending our people here to the East do a wonderful work. If I could induce the railways to give summer excursions to the East as they give you summer excursions to the West, it would do a tremendous lot of good. I would like your Board of Trade to work to get more excursions to the West, and from the West to the East in summer. They could come and see your splendid City of Montreal, and you could show them that some day your city must become as great as New York, and they could go to Halifax and see that it must become a city such as Boston. Let them understand Canada and its institutions and its business men and the hope they have for the future, and you can do that by getting them here and showing them these things. Then there is the tariff. If the tariff is used as a weapon of repression what will be the result? It is the greatest weapon in the world to fight the battles of commerce. It would be impossible for us to work out our great national destiny without the tariff, because there is only the tariff between us and the United States. I believe that ab- sorption would be a certainty but for the weapon the tariff gives to us. But it should be given us to work out the destiny of Canada along harmonious lines, for I say to you in all seriousness that it is my profound conviction that unless you show some active sympathy with the hopes, aspirations and troubles of the men of the West, those citizens from over the line will resent it; and the day will not be far distant when an agitation for separation in the West will make itself felt. How did the United States meet a similar agitation? It was overcome by their great Civil War. Side by side with volunteers from Massachusetts and New York were the men from Nebraska and Iowa. It was a great national issue for them and united them. The salvation of Canada lies in the
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application of just and fair principles to all these things so vitally affecting both the East and West. Let us have national fair play as well as sacrifice, so that we may all be joined in common good will and with a just realization of our sense of obligation to the great flag that protects us, and under whose aegis our commerce goes freely over every sea — and we don't pay any- thing for it.
I said the other day to my fellow townsmen (and for the last ten years I have pointed out this doctrine) whenever I see the Plains of Abraham and think of that national debt of 500,000,000 pounds sterling incurred there in order that Canada might be placed under the British Crown, I think of the poor Whitechapel citizen bearing his share in the burden of that debt, while we contribute nothing. They furnish the best markets for the products of the West, for which there is safety under the British flag. The great national issue which I have held up to the West has been our sense of obligation to that great Empire of which we form part. I try to make them see with a wider outlook than the narrow confines of their provinces or even of this Dominion; hoping that as our minds rise superior to small things by the application of just and equitable doctrines to the problems that confront us, we may secure the solution of the transportation problem, the elimination of watered stock, the reduction of fixed charges, the reduction of freight rates, the adjustment of the tariff so that it will not work for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many but will be a real instrument for national safety, the opening up of new markets, the enlarging of the national vision and the widening of our horizon. With these things then we may hope some day to take a proud position as predominant partner of that great Empire. We are playing our part in the Empire as men with a great destiny and great hope for the future. Nothing does so much good as to rise from sordid ideas to great dreams for the future. I ask you Montrealers to realize something of the troubles, difficulties and struggles of the West, because with your help these problems can be worked out. The hope, of course, lies in the next generation, because if we in the West are able to take our men past this generation until the boys are educated in our schools and get old enough to vote, we shall have saved the country for Canada; and in that it is my firm
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conviction that we shall have saved the Empire. And I want you to send your Canadian Club to Calgary in 1913 so as to see them and realize their aspirations, hopes and struggles. Come west and see us. Try and get these summer excursions organized so that you may get to know us and we to know you. I have talked to you much but there are a good many things I would like to have said. But in going away I would like to leave with the thought that the future of the great Dominion of Canada lies between Fort William and the foot hills; that in your hands Providence has placed as our great Metropolitan City of Montreal a responsibility co-extensive with your oppor- tunities, and you will be held up to posterity for the manner in which you discharged that trust. Let us try to work out the hope we have in the future with a realization of our obligation to Canada as a whole; so as to make Canada as the greatest of the great nations that compose that greatest of all Empires which has done more, and will do more, to promote world-wide civilization than all the empires which have gone before.
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[ March i8th, 1Q12 ]
TAXATION
By HON. LAWSON PURDY
I FEEL a little embarrassed in coming here from the United States, because I think Canada is, in many ways, in advance of that country in respect of local taxation. In the whole Dominion I think you no longer have the general property tax with a tax on personal property, which is common, indeed almost universal in the United States, and has everywhere broken down, as it did here. I am not sure whether Montreal ever did have this system, but Ontario did.
The chief reason, I take it, why progress in taxation matters has been more rapid in Canada than in the United States is because we are confronted with 47 different varieties of con- stitutional restraints, and not by one general document which does not restrain us. As a matter of fact, the oldest consti- tutions of the United States are, from my point of view, the least objectionable, because they go the least into detail. But in the states of the Middle West, and most of those of the West, whose constitutions were only formed 40 or 50 years ago, the people seemed to have the idea that they possessed such universal wisdom that they could lay down details for all coming generations, and made it exceedingly difficult to change the rules. In the State of Ohio, which is now having a con- stitutional convention as to taxation, it is provided in the Constitution that all property, both real and personal, including all intangible property shall be assessed and taxed at its true value in money. During the last 25 years they have tried four or five times to amend that section. The amendments have been submitted to the people by the Legislature, and because of a rule that constitutional amendments in order to be carried,
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must be voted for by a majority of all the persons voting at the elections for public officials, they have never succeeded in getting a clear majority. For instance, on one occasion 425,000 votes were cast in favor of the amendment to 26,000 against it, but the amendment fell through because they needed four hundred and seventy odd thousand to carry it. You can appreciate the difficulties under which these Middle West states labor.
In my own State of New York we are comparatively little hampered by constitutional restrictions, and as a result have advanced much faster than the states of the middle west. In one respect we have come very nearly to the point reached by Montreal. Here, as I understand your system, you depend for about 11-12 of your revenue for local purposes on real estate tax with about 1-12 on business tax. In New York City about 3 per cent, of the revenue comes from general property tax, personal property, as you can see, a very insignificant amount; and the balance from a tax on real estate, save for certain sources of revenue such as rentals from docks, water receipts, and some license taxes, forming all told a comparatively small percentage of the total revenue.
I suppose another cause of the advance made here has been your joining together of the executive and legislative power, and having a responsible parliamentary government with a ballot and simple election. Our ancestors thought that in order to keep the reins of government in their own hands, they had to elect everybody who performed any sort of function; with the result that in some places where this is carried to extra- ordinary excess, they have to elect 40 or 50 officials at one election. Of course it is impossible for the people to take any interest in that vast number of officers; the result is that the election is in the hands of a very small number of men for whom we have to be devoutly thankful. If we did not have our political bosses I do not know how on earth our electoral machinery could function. I hope some day to see our elec- toral system reduced and simplified, and feel certain we would advance in many ways if that were accomplished. There is a strong movement in the United States to bring that about. Of course you have heard how the commission form of govern- ment of cities has been sweeping the country in the smaller
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cities. I am not entirely in love with it, I like the British system better; but it is a vast improvement to vote for five instead of fifteen or twenty. But both our countries are for- tunate in that we advance along different lines from Great Britain from whom we have both inherited our tax institution.
If you see fit, you may divide taxes into three broad classes, good, bad and indifferent. An indifferent tax is one that does not make it harder for people to earn their living. An example of that is the tax on inheritances, from which we get a good deal of money in the State of New York. It simply takes part of the estate of a decedent when it passes to his next of kin or to other objects of his bounty. The beneficiary does not get quite so much as he might have done had the State not taken part, but that does not make it more difficult for him to earn his living. But it does not do anybody any particular good, and the people who are deprived of the money do not altogether like it. Then we have bad taxes. Any tax is an evil, a necessary one it may be said, that makes it more difficult for men to earn their living. Our personal tax in the United States is such a tax, even when levied with skill and ability — which it is not very often.
People are very curious, especially men of the Anglo-Saxon race — we call ourselves that because we are not. But we inherit a certain tradition from Great Britain of not repealing bad laws, but just forgetting them; and you find small com- munities all over the United States where the strange and wonderful tax laws their ancestors made for them, or which they made for themselves, are quite disregarded. In my own state, for example, it is not at all uncommon for towns to make bargains with persons who propose to establish manufacturing plants. They say, "Come to us and we will agree about taxes," quite unmindful that it is against the law. They will bargain to bring that manufacturing plant into the town on the theory that it is a good thing for the town, and I have no doubt that it is; but it is unlawful, and you cannot get people generally, so far in the United States, to see that it would be better for them to do legally what they do almost universally in contra- vention of the law. There is that intense effort to get away from the particular results of bad things without the courage to absolutely change the legal system which produces them.
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Any tax which bears on consumption makes it harder to get a living. The taxes on buildings do the same because these taxes are passed along down to the people who must occupy the buildings whether for business or for residential purposes. The tax on land on the other hand does not make it harder to get a living, so it may be said to be a good tax. We notice a strong movement at the present time in Great Britain to shift some portion of the burden from the workers, to the owners of land whose property rises in value without any effort on their part and while they sleep, which is not the case with any other kind of property. A house always tends to depreciate, and it is a hard task for the assessor to keep pace with the downward tendency of buildings, because there is no rule you can follow. A building which cost $100,000 will not be worth that five years from now, but you do not know how much less it will be worth. It depends upon the life of that building to a large degree, and in our rapidly growing communities we have to measure our assessments of perishable property such as buildings, not only by depreciation from age, but by their becoming unsuitable for the sites they occupy because of the change of the character of the neighbourhood, and because of new inventions which are continually making possible new types of buildings.
Everywhere throughout the world, certainly on this Western Continent, expenditures are rising, in spite of all they can do who are trying to make government more efficient and more economical. And it certainly is true that in the Dominion of Canada and the United States we have made much progress in the last 25 years toward efficiency in government, producing more of value for our citizens for every dollar that is spent. But all that can be done in that direction will be slight as com- pared with the increase in expenditures that we are making and going to make for what I may call social uses. It has been borne in upon us that we owe large duties to all our fellow citizens, especially those who can do the least for themselves. And if we did not do it for this reason, we should do it because we realize that when one part of the community suffers the more prosperous part must suffer as well. If we permit un- sanitary conditions to exist, the death rate will be highest in the poor parts of the city, but the most prosperous part will suffer at the same time. When our New York budget is made
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up we see an interesting sight every year. That budget is growing at an amazing rate every year, a rate which staggers us. For this year it is $181,000,000. When we started with our consolidated city only 15 years ago, our budget was only about $50,000,000; it has almost trebled, much more than doubled, in those 14 or 15 years. When our financial Board, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment meets in October to hear the citizens and others interested in the making up of the budgets, it is no uncommon thing for our associations to be represented by some trustees urging greater economy and that the budget be cut down, while other associations of which the same men are trustees are urging larger appropriations for all the departments that have peculiarly to do with the health and education of the citizens. We recognize to-day that it is largely a matter of money what our death rate shall be. Our health commissioner last time put the problem squarely to the Financial Board, when he said that our death rate should decrease from 20 per thousand to less than 15 per thousand. He said, " We have a very low death rate for a large city, and I can reduce it more and more. The death rate is very largely amongst children, mostly under one year of age; and for every hundred thousand dollars you give I will save hundreds of babies' lives." When it is brought home to us how the saving of infant life is purely a matter of money, that money will be forthcoming.
More and more we are spending largely for education. I visited McGill University this morning and was very much interested in seeing what the university is doing for the exten- sion of education throughout the Dominion. Similar work is being done all over this country and the United States, and all these things will cause us more and more to realize not only that our laws should be better devised for the raising of revenue, but that our administration should constantly improve. Every- where there is niggardliness in expenditure on that department which distributes the burden of taxation. You cannot afford to economize there. I know something of this department here in Montreal; you are spending a great deal less than you will in the near future, and a great deal less than you should spend. It is not possible for the number of men in that de- partment to do the work in this City as they themselves would
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like to do it. We in New York have expanded our department in the last five years from about forty-eight assessors, assisted by clerks and others, to sixty-eight. We give each man from about seven to eight thousand parcels of real estate to value and do not put upon him any additional work. Here I do believe you do not put additional work on the men who make your valuation in order that the business tax may be imposed. Our men have nothing to do but value real estate, and in making that increase we have only done what was absolutely essential, and we shall soon need more still.
During these last five years we have done something else that may be of interest to you. It is only carrying out what must be done, one way or another, everywhere where real estate assessment work is performed. We think it has been very helpful to us and may possibly be to you. I have here before me a publication got out annually which any citizen can obtain for $1.00. It shows the value of land per front foot for the uniform depth of 100 feet on every side and every square in the city of New York. Not all the land is cut up into lots — for we still have farms in the City of New York, which out of a total of 329 square miles contains one section of 129 square miles with only 350,000 people in it, where there are still large farms devoted to market gardening purposes. We set down the value of such land as that in dollars per acre, marking it as the acreage value changes. That system certainly has very great advantages from our point of view. In the first place, when men start out to value land, if they confine their attention too closely to the street in which they are working, they are liable to be misled by evidences of value which for some reason or other they misunderstand, or by conditions of which they are ignorant.
Just suppose these tables before me are blocks, and here are the streets between the tables. A man gets out to value this table. Of course he has the work of his predecessor or his own previous work to guide him. We have a magnificent system of office records, as you have here — I don't know of any place having a better. Every lot in the City is on a separate sheet of paper in a vertical file, and the history of that lot is in the assessors' office just as is the case here in Montreal. We keep our records as best we can, as evidences of value. A man goes
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to value the property and bases this one on a certain sale or rental or mortgage; he may determine the value there as a thousand dollars a foot, a hundred feet deep. He conies to the next street which looks like 800 dollars, and the next one is a thousand dollars again. If he never goes back to look at the three, he may leave the figures as I have said. But if he puts that on a map so that he can look at it as a whole, it will probably occur to him at once that he has made a mistake, and that the 800 dollar street is no poorer than the two on either side, so that he has put the other two too high or the one in the middle too low. I do not mean that there are not cases where you have greater differences than that between adjacent streets. It often happens. Here is a business thoroughfare which may be worth twice as much as the streets to the east or west. It does not show by itself, but the real proportions of these streets come out when you look at them on the map and compare them one with another, not using separate lots of different depth or size, but fixed units. Our unit is a lot of a hundred feet deep of ordinary width, and lying normally with reference to the grade of the City. Of course where a street is being opened up, often the grade of one side or another or of both sides will be bad. Some lots need to be excavated and some do not, but the unit is based on a lot lying normally with reference to the grade, and exactly one hundred feet deep. Of course a great many of the lots vary in depth; but one hundred is a convenient unit, and that is why we adopted it. The man doing his work gets his map covered with figures that are all comparable, and he can compare them all to see that he has not been misled at any particular point with evidences of value that he has not understood. After all this work is done, and the lots are valued, and the time comes for the citizen to compare the value, the map is a guide to him.
The Board of Revenue consists of seven commissioners appointed by the Mayor to hold office at his pleasure, and generally changed with each administration. Our assessors hold office during good behaviour; they are only discharged for cause, and are appointed as a result of Civil Service Examina- tion and must be taken from approximately the head of the list. That makes for continuity and relieves assessors from the pressure of political friends, which must be very trying.
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When the commissioners come to hear complaints, they have spread before them this land-value map and are not in so much danger of making reductions which do not equalize, but make inequality worse. Suppose we had a street here at a thousand dollars a foot, and some man who owned a lot on that street complained, and we cut down his assessment. Then if this were carried on, we should have inequalities all over the place, one of the worst errors an assessor could commit.
Last year we found this map of the utmost service, where in certain territory we undoubtedly had too high an assessment as compared with the rest cf the City. We were trying to assess a cattle market, and the assessors after hours of work were able to lay out a job which involved changes in four thousand separately assessed parcels of land. It was all done uniformly, each street marked down by units, and the different lots changed to bring them down to the new basis. Then the maps are reproduced and published so that every citizen can get a map of the entire city if he wants it.
Last year we made an arrangement with our leading real estate paper, " The Real Estate Record and Guide," by which they published the maps without charge to the city, and gave one copy to each of their subscribers free, gave the department 250 copies for its own use, and sold copies to nonsubscribers at $1.00. When you consider what a tremendous record it is, you will see that it is a very cheap publication.
Then we have a publicity department. The more publicity you have the more trying it is to be an assessor. But we know perfectly well that if there is any district in the city where there are no complaints, the work is not being well done. We have a publication in connection with this which is issued by the city itself, and a municipal newspaper — and it is not light reading. It prints our assessment roll complete for the whole city by sections, of which there are 42 or 43. Each section contains 12,000 to 15,000 parcels of land and covers quite a large area. Any one interested can buy it for 25 cents and take it home to study at his leisure. It gives the assessment for every separately assessed parcel of land, the name of the owner if known, the size of the lot, the number of stories of any building, the lot number, block number, the value of the
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land, and the total value of the whole property with improve- ments, if any.
Where land is rising rapidly in value, as it is in most cities of the United States, and particularly here in Montreal, the assessors must from the very nature of the case always be behind with their work. The assessments are always substanti- ally a year old when the taxes are paid. In that time the value is sometimes increased 30, 40, 50 and even 100 per cent. That is the kind of property concerning which assessors should be most diligent, because it can well afford to bear its full share of taxation. The property that is stationary or declining in value is generally more fully assessed than property that is rising in value; it must be so from the nature of the case. If real estate is declining in value, it is likely to be overassessed by the time the taxes are paid. You see then how important it is that the assessors should be equipped in the best possible way to keep pace with advancing or declining values.
There is one part of the equipment in which we are sadly lacking and so are you. In Great Britain you cannot record a deal that does not truly state the value of the property trans- ferred. The other day in my office a real estate man from London dropped in on his way to buy some of your rapidly advancing land for his customers in England; he said that he had never seen a deal that did not contain so far as he knew the actual honest consideration, and if such a thing had happened it was unique and extraordinary. In the City of New York only about 4 or 5 per cent, of the deals contain the actual con- sideration. Only those substantially executed by executors or trustees, or by referees at auction sales are thus recorded. We are thus deprived of 19/20 of the record evidence on actual transac- tions to guide us in making the assessment. It is the duty of our assessors to find the actual considerations if they can. They do find it out in a large proportion of transactions, but they have to waste a lot of their valuable time hunting for evidence and begging men to give it to them — and of course they* expect something in return.
The transfer of real estate is not a private, it is a public matter. When we introduced a bill requiring an affidavit to be made of the actual consideration in transfers of real estate, some people objected, declaring that it was prying into private busi-
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ness, and there was no reason why real estate should be the only thing on whose transfer the law should require the actual consideration to be stated. I do not think they quite realize yet that real estate is the only thing the consideration for whose transfer is not given just as much publicity as people can get for it. Pick up any trade journal and you will get the market quotation for every staple commodity every day. Take up a financial paper and you get the market quotations for transfer of bonds every minute. And the more public all these values can be made the more the people who are dealing in them like it. Real estate is the only thing the considerations for whose sale are not published, and the only one of these things in which the public has the same kind of an interest. I hope here in the Province of Quebec you are aiding your assessors and your- selves. It is not so much for ourselves. What do we care if we do not get the consideration and make the assessments as they should be? You would say it is our fault because we did not get the evidence. It is not a personal matter for the assessors, except that they take a pride in doing their work as it should be done. The assessors will tell you everywhere that the greatest aid there can be to the successful performance of their duty, would be filling in with every transfer the actual amount of the consideration. It is sometimes objected by a real estate man here and there that if someone is requiring a plot and buys four or five or six pieces of land, and the owner of the yth lot finds it out, he doubles the price, knowing that the man needs that yth lot and must have it to complete his parcel, so that he has to pay twice what it is worth. They say if this is made public, the assessors would be guided by that sale and over- assess the surrounding properties. That is nonsense. That yth lot is the very one as to which under existing conditions we are liable to get the facts, because it is unusual and peculiar and the facts leak out; while the other six being quite usual, we do not get them unless we hunt very hard. And if the assessor is a little bit lazy he is likely to get that yth lot without any trouble, and may guide himself by it on all the other assessments. Thus the evil that they fear from giving us all the evidence is likely to occur from our getting a little of it.
I may be told that sometimes men would not tell the truth. But there are peculiar safeguards about the easy conscience of
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people in this matter. I am a member of the legal profession, and all the deeds will go through the officers of the members of my profession. Generally speaking, members of that profession have a more educated sense of ethics than those of any other. That is natural, because we have a larger knowledge of the law than any others. No reputable lawyer would allow an affidavit as to the transfer of real property to be executed in his office that was not truthful. He would not do it as a matter of professional ethics for one thing, and for another in justice to his client. Anyway there would soon be trouble one way or another if a false affidavit were made. Suppose, for example, a property were sold for $30,000 and an affidavit were made that the consideration was $40,000. How about the man who sold it? Would he lose any time suing the man for the other $10,000 and prove that he had only got $30,000? There are various other considerations involving details, so that it is perfectly sure that the only false affidavits would come from the offices of disreputable lawyers with disreputable clients, and that is a rare combination. My friends who do not want the law are very much afraid of being misled by the evidence we want. But in our City about 90 per cent, of the titles pass through the hands of companies, and no company would permit its employees to connive at making a false affidavit. They could not afford to do so. Men will sometimes do things out of per- sonal interest that they would not do when their employment might be ended by it and they would have no personal advantage in doing it. We could rely, generally speaking, that every affidavit that comes out of a titled company's office would be true, and that would be 90 per cent, of the titles.
Probably the conveyancing of the lands in Montreal is to a considerable degree in the hands of lawyers who have a reputa- tion as conveyancers. This is a very intricate and nice branch of law, generally recognized as one of the most honorable of professions. I do not think I need say anything more about misleading affidavits. I would like to see every consideration filled right in the deed. We cannot get that done in New York at present: we are having enough trouble to get what we are asking, an affidavit to be filed with the deed and transferred by the recorder of deeds, to the assessors for their exclusive use and to be kept secret by them. If once we get that, pretty soon
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the people will not want this secrecy any more, and it will be as it once was the general practice to put the true consideration into the deal and let it all be a public bargain.
I know you are not afflicted here as they are in Ottawa. In our case a nominal consideration of a dollar or a hundred dollars is put in. But in Ottawa if a man buys a property to resell it and he pays $20,000 for it he gets $30,000 put in the deed. But if he buys it at the same price and wants to keep it for a home, he does not want it overassessed, so he puts $15,000 in the deed. On the whole, I think that is worse than our custom. Our system just shows that a transfer has taken place and says nothing about the value. But they tell me that at Ottawa the usual thing is that the true consideration is quite different from the consideration stated in the deed one way or the other. That is very misleading — and I hear that the same thing is sometimes done in Montreal.
Then there is another system we have which I will tell you about: that is the participation mortgage, which has become the fashion of late. It is a new thing with us, I don't know whether you have them or not. Take this case: a man came to my friend, a competent appraiser with an established reputa- tion, one who stands for this true consideration bill and believes it good for business, by the way, and asked him to appraise a lot, saying that he wanted an appraisal of upwards of $100,000. My friend said, " I cannot appraise it for any such sum; it is not worth it." " Well, then, I don't want you to appraise it at all," was the reply. A little later my friend met the man again and said, " I got that appraised all right and I got a mortgage for $100,000. I participate for $75,000 and I get $25,000 and it is all the property is worth; now if I can sell for over $100,000 everything I get over that is velvet and I have a pretty good chance of getting the $75,000 which I participate in the mortgage."
One of the evidences that is helpful to our department used to be particularly the fact that savings banks with us are limited in loans to 60 per cent, of the market value of improved property, and life insurance companies are limited to two thirds of its market value. Men who borrow are generally active oper- ators in real estate to sell again or to build to sell. They generally get such a first mortgage as they can because it
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frees their capital and makes the sale easier. That is a perfectly legitimate operation, and they are entitled to get all the money they can at a given interest. They may get 50 per cent, on the property and want a greater amount of loan; they know that in barter and sale, property would get about the actual market value and the savings bank mortgage is limited to 60 per cent. We had the trouble put to us a little while ago. We had to assess a building in the lower part of Manhattan Island. We had it assessed for $1,650,000 and there was a mortgage made on it by a life insurance company for $1,600,000. Somebody criticized our assessment, and said that we had it assessed practically at the amount of a first mortgage by an insurance company, while everybody knew these companies were limited to loans of not more than two thirds value. We investigated the matter and found that the insurance company had really loaned $1,100,000; the $500,000 was a participation by the owner of the property.
Why did he do it? That is the sort of thing we have to confront us and I suppose you have similar things to confront you. If you can get a law that will give your assessors in some way or other the actual consideration for every transfer, it will make it easier for us, and if we get it it will make it so much the easier for you. I have talked this matter over in various states of the union, but of course I would like to see it adopted in my own state first. The sooner some one starts it the sooner it will be secured.
This is a very important matter. It is a dry subject which people do not ordinarily take much interest in, but it is one in which the whole people whether they own real estate or not must take interest; because as your real estate is assessed, so your City is made a better place to do business in and a better place to live in, or it is made worse. It is for all the citizens to take an interest in this assessment work and help it along in order that the best result may be secured; and if they are secured in one place it sets a higher standard for every other place in the community.
217
[ March 2$th, 1912 ]
PIONEERS' VOYAGES TO THE NORTHWEST
By SENATOR ARTHUR BOYER
BEFORE coming to my subject of pioneer leaders and voyageurs throughout the Northwest will you allow me to say a few words of interest to us all? Ever since the set- tlement of New France we have been recognized as one of the greatest sources of wealth; we have a new country full of riches. In the early days there were only the Indians, but they became scarcer until they had to be persuaded to go further and further west to supply the ever increasing demand for Canada's furs. At first the white people, as a rule, accompanied the Indians on their trips, so as to increase their trade with the people they met in that unknown western country. But little by little they acquired the knowledge the Indians possessed of the routes of known and unknown rivers, and became settlers and traders themselves, and acquired the name which will be celebrated in Canadian history as "Coureurs de Bois." After a while these men, knowing every track from east to west, from north to south, dispensed with the Indians and went out alone to the far west. Four or five of them would club together and put all they pos- sessed in birch bark canoes, and they did not hesitate to penetrate even as far as the Rocky Mountains.
This free and easy life soon brought into existence a race of men that the law had to subdue. Liquor had a great deal to do with the corruption that then prevailed, and in order to prevent this corruption the French Intendant had to pass cer- tain ordinances requiring every man engaged in the fur trade to take out a license. At first these licenses were only granted to retired officers or their widows. But as the widows could
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not very well go into the wild country and trade they took into their service these coureurs de bois, and it grew from bad to worse until at last the French Government took charge of the whole settlement. Thus it came about that during the eighteenth century we find the establishment of outposts of the French Government as far west as the Rocky Mountains. These outposts did a wonderful business, the demand for furs increasing year after year. Then came the cession of this country to Great Britain, and for a few years, three at least, nothing was heard of the vast country to the west. Then in 1766, three years after the Treaty of Paris ceded the whole of this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific to England, James Currie came over, and he was the first Englishman who pene- trated into the far west. De Landrye had as early as 1717 established a post where Fort Garry, or Winnipeg, stands to-day, and French outposts were established as far north as 55 degrees. The English coming after them had only to follow the routes laid down by the early French traders to reap a rich harvest. Thus do we find as late as 1780 an enormous competition in the fur trade amongst the English people. In fact the competition became so keen that daggers and knives were used to procure from the Indians whatever furs they had.
At the Grand Portage, now Fort William, a very distin- guished Swiss adventurer by the name of Weyden, who was known throughout the Northwest for his honesty and charming qualities, was invited to the house of an American trader by the name of James Bond. Weyden went to the dinner alone, while Bond was accompanied by his clerk. During the dinner a quarrel arose, and Weyden was shot in the leg, allowed to bleed to death, and buried without ceremony. Next morn- ing Bond and his clerk were arrested, but for want of evidence they were acquitted. This was in 1780. But this unfortunate occurrence had the good effect of bringing together the different traders and uniting them under one large company, which was henceforth known as the Bourgeois du Nord-Ouest; with whom later on we find such men as the two Frobishers, Gregory and Currie and others founding what was afterwards the great Northwest Company.
Trading went on briskly. In 1780 business was at its height. Allow me to give you a few figures as to what the fur trade in
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1787 amounted to. The produce of that year amounted to the following furs: — 106,000 beaver skins, 2,100 bear skins, 1,500 fox, 4,000 kid fox, 4,000 deer, 17,000 muskrats, 32,000 marten skins, 1,800 mink, 6,000 lynx, 600 wolverines, 1,800 fisher skins, 100 raccoon, 7,000 elk, 750 deer, 1,200 dressed deer skins and 500 buffalo robes — and this was the record of only one company. The Hudson's Bay Company doing its own busi- ness would keep its own figures. So when one looks at the enor- mous destruction that went on then, it is small wonder that furs with us are so rare and particularly so expensive.
The formation of the new company brought out from Scotland a host of distinguished young men, amongst whom was Alexander Mackenzie. He was born in 1760 in Aberdeen. Coming out as a young man he entered the service of Edward Gregory, a merchant of Montreal. Gregory afterwards joined the new Northwest Company, and at the same time Mackenzie entered the service of the company. Possessed of ample courage and pluck he soon made his mark. For some time he was stationed at the Grand Portage, but finding promotion rather slow he resigned. Mr. Gregory advanced him a few goods, and he took up a small trading post on the Detroit River where to-day Detroit stands. But on the uniting of all the interests in the Northwest at the formation of the new company, Mac- kenzie was recalled, his principals having marked him out for the wonderful career he afterwards achieved. At the age of twenty-three Mackenzie came back and took charge of the interests of the Northwest Company in the far north, establish- ing at Lake Athabaska — seen then by not more than half a dozen white people — the fort of Chippewan.
Mackenzie's idea was to divert as much of the Hudson's Bay trade as he could, the trade which the Indians used to take down the Peace River to the Hudson's Bay. He succeeded so well during the first two years' settlement at Fort Chippewan and two other forts to the north, that he diverted an immense amount of trade from the Hudson's Bay Company. But looking for still more country, more furs and more Indians to trade with, Mac- kenzie, without a minute's hesitation, and accompanied by five Canadiens from the Province of Quebec — then Lower Canada — in a canoe thirty-five feet long specially constructed for the oc- casion, and so built that two men could carry it without any
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trouble, carrying three thousand pounds of merchandise, besides provisions, blankets, guns and so on, started forth to discover the Polar seas.
I will not detain you with the story of this wonderful dis- covery. Mackenzie realized that his education did not suit him to become a great discoverer. On reading his diary of his first voyage to the north, you will only find that, "To-day the weather was so and so ; " " We were so and so ; " " One river fell this side and the other river the other side," and so on. But one great trait Mackenzie possessed was the domination he exercised over his fellow men. He said, " I was reproached later on when my journal was published for not giving details as to the bird life, minerals, animals and so on of the country I went through, but having constantly to keep my eye on my guide — he was an Indian I did not know and therefore could not trust — having to provide everything necessary for the food of my crew, having every day to be guided by my star toward that goal I had under- taken to reach so that it should not be missed, I had no time to look at birds, flowers or that sort of thing. I had only one thing to look for," and he modestly adds, " that was the North Sea, and I did reach that."
Tradition says, or some of these men are reported to have said on the return from Mackenzie's first Polar voyage, that Mackenzie was a magician. Of all his crew of five Canadiens, two Indians and their wives, he was the only one who had ever seen the sea. His crew were getting desperate, provisions were out, the weather was getting exceedingly cold and the men wanted to return. But Mackenzie saw by the course of the river he was following that at certain hours the current was getting swifter and swifter. He immediately realized that the tides were being felt. His men were asking him to return, saying that they were likely to be frozen up in a country without provisions, where for a month they had not met anyone, Indian or white. Mac- kenzie said, " Now, lads, if you have enough trust in me I will promise you one thing. I have power enough to run the current of this river whichever way I please. If you will only bide your time I will make the current of this river run us down on our course, and when we have reached the end of our journey I will make the current turn back, and without putting a paddle to the water I will bring you back to where we are starting from."
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They went, and the faster the tide went the faster they jour- neyed, until Mackenzie saw by the water that they had reached the sea. It was a wonderful journey and a wonderful discovery. At the time there were no medals to be rewarded, but the terri- tory added to the British Crown amounted to millions of acres, and the increase of trade to the Hudson's Bay Company and to England amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That discovery of the Mackenzie River coupled with the discoveries of Lieut. Earle to the Northeast solved the question of an ocean to the north of the Continent of North America, and later on, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, led to the voyages of discovery for the Northwest Passage.
Again, on the tenth of October, 1792, Mackenzie, in a canoe built like the first one, started on his way to the Pacific Ocean. Ten men composed his crew, two of whom had been members his old crew to the Polar seas. They paddled until the tenth of October, and when within view of the Rocky Mountains the rivers were getting frozen, so Mackenzie wintered where he was, and not until the tenth of May was he able to start on one of the most terrific journeys that ever a white men had undertaken. Without a guide, without a map, simply guided by his good star, he gradually fell on the Fraser River, and all of you who have had the good fortune to travel by the Canadian Pacific Railway which follows for a long distance the Fraser River, will realize what intrepid navigators the eighteenth century produced, when you think of these men shooting down that river until they reached the sea. They were frightened of neither natives, rapids nor rocks, and after excessive toil of two months, this brave band of ten men were at last rewarded by the sight of the Pacific Ocean lying quiet in the distance. Mackenzie knew that once more he had reached the object sought for so long — he had fixed the western boundary of the Continent of North America, and with a piece of red chalk he wrote on a rock, " Alexander Mac- kenzie From Canada Overland, July 22, 1793."
The spot where Mackenzie landed is on the Canadian Pacific Railway, standing 32.30 degrees north and 105 degrees west, where to-day the small village of Menzies stands. He remained but a couple of days on the Pacific Ocean. The Indians got rather hostile and anxious to get away from faces they hadnever seen before, and from whom they expected or suspected no good
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Pioneers' Voyages to the Northwest
would come. Mackenzie took half a dozen observations so as to determine in a positive manner the outlet of the spot he had reached, and began his trip backward to the country he had come from. Out of provisions, exhausted by a winter of priva- tion and hardship in the Rocky Mountains, they undertook as gaily as they did things in those days to retrace their steps ; fighting as they went, weak as they were, they turned back, and, on the twenty-second day of October, the fort they had left eleven months before loomed up in the distance. When you realize that, you will understand what kind of men they were.
Of this wonderful man, who afterwards became Sir Alexander Mackenzie, allow me to say this. While still young he was drawn by commerce to the country northwest of Lake Superior; endowed by Nature with an unquestioned courage and enter- prising spirit, he chose to live in an atmosphere of toilsome exercise, and his experiences with the fur trade well qualified him for his later daring voyages to the Polar seas and the Pacific Ocean. We are to-day enjoying the benefits of his discoveries. At the time they were made they largely extended our knowledge of geography, added millions of acres to the British Crown, thou- sands of pounds to British commerce. Mackenzie adds, " The dangers I have encountered, the toils I have suffered, the many toilsome days and inclement nights, will not have been in vain in a few years." He retired from the service of the company and returned to enjoy a well earned rest in his native land, married a relative of his by the same name. He died full of honor and respected by all who knew him, in 1820.
I come now to another of my heroes, Sir George Simpson. A great many of us have had the pleasure of knowing him, or at least of seeing him. He wrote a wonderful book entitled, "A Trip Around the World," the details of which are rather amusing. He being highly educated has filled the accounts of his voyages with very pleasant and sometimes exciting narratives. Starting on a trip around the world, he left London on March 3rd, 1841. He recounts that it took him ten hours to reach Liverpool from London, while to-day we do it in two and a half hours. Em- barking at Liverpool on the fourth of March, 1841, on one of the giants of that time, the good paddle-wheel steamer "Caledonia," Capt. McKellar, of 1300 tons and 450 horsepower — the Olympic of that time — he took fourteen days to Halifax and two more to
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Boston. The only railway that existed at that time was from Boston to Nashua, thirty-six miles, and thence by stage as best they could to Montreal.
The old Hudson's Bay House, which a good many of us re- member, stood at Lachine, where to-day stands the Convent of St. Anne. From there, on the fourth day of May, 1841, with two canoes thirty-five feet long and five feet beam, one of them carrying a crew of thirteen men and the other twelve, mostly Iroquois Indians from the opposite village of Caughnawaga, Sir George Simpson started. He wrote : " For the credit of my party these men were kept as sober as voyageurs can possibly be kept on the journey. And for keeping sober, as sober as we could keep them, the reward was a feather for each one's cap."
" On the fourth day of May," he says, " we left Lachine in the thick of a northwest gale and a blinding snowstorm, and reached Pointe Claire in time for dinner, retiring in the house of Mr. Charlebois," who, by the bye, had been married to the daughter of an old servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, Miss Dease; he was the gentleman who accompanied a cousin of Sir George Simpson to Point Barrow in the Polar Sea. Sir George continues : " His hospitality there was so much the more wel- come that we were soaking, cold, almost frozen, and a warm roof was most welcome this fourth day of May. Embarking after dinner, pursued our course and finally reaching St. Anne, not for- getting," Sir George adds, " on the part of the canoe men to say a prayer to * La Bonne Ste. Anne, Patronne des Voyageurs' ." Taking the Lake of Two Mountains, they encountered, to their dismay, the heavy canoe of the Hudson's Bay Company on the way west, which had left four days before them, wind bound, but the lighter canoes went through, and at 5.30 landed at Hudson's Bay, where to-day the picturesque village of Como stands.
I am not going to detain you with the long, tedious journey up to Fort Garry. Suffice it to say it took eighteen days to get up to the Grand Portage, where Fort William to-day is. It took twelve days more to get up to Fort Garry, where they rested and the canoes were finally discarded. Getting on across the prairie by pony, they reached Fort Vancouver after twelve weeks, hav- ing, as Sir George Simpson says, covered close to five thousand miles in the space of three months.
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It was wonderful going, but would you allow me before follow- ing his voyage any further to give a few of the characteristics of the great work the Hudson's Bay Company was then doing in Fort Garry. Simpson says that in 1841 a large settlement had grown around Fort Garry. It was at the time the chief settle- ment of the Hudson's Bay Company in the inland country. They had, as far back as 1721, tried to civilize and cultivate the im- mediate neighborhood of Fort Garry, and succeeded wonderfully well, for Simpson adds, " Whoever will take the trouble of sow- ing wheat in the rich soil around Fort Garry will reap forty bushels to the acre." Twenty years after, the same fields with- out any manure, practically without any working, yielded from fifteen to twenty-five bushels. In 1826 a very severe winter came over the settlements of the Red River — it was the coldest weather in the memory of the inhabitants — when the rivers were frozen almost to the bottom. When the spring came, tremendous floods took place, the country was flooded for miles and miles, barns, cattle and everything were swept away before the raging flood, while the inhabitants were only saved by getting to a few knolls higher than the floods could reach. But Sir George Simpson adds that this misfortune was really a good thing. It destroyed the buildings which were too old to be of any use, and the in- habitants were rich enough to erect new ones, while the flood not only irrigated the country, but manured it; so that, though it had been sown and reaped for twenty years, the succeeding year brought on such a crop as had never been known in the country.
In 1826 a venture was made to import cattle around Fort Garry. Sir George Simpson tells us that five hundred head of cattle were driven into the country and scattered around the different posts to see how they could stand the climate. He tells us that horses, if left out all the year round, would stand the climate admirably, but as far as cattle went, they had every night to put them into enclosures to save them from the depredations of the wolves. And a curious thing arose in this primitive coun- try. The manure becoming attached to the hoofs of the cattle and freezing to them, was the cause of over two hundred of them being found dead in the spring. The venture was not a success, and the Hudson's Bay Company never tried it again.
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Leaving Fort Garry it is useless to follow him every step until he reached Edmonton, one of the Company's main posts, at the foot of the Rockies; crossing the Rockies and eventually landing in Vancouver, forty miles from the sea on Columbia River, then on his wonderful trip, up and down the Pacific Coast, up the coast to Alaska, and down past California as far as Honolulu Island.
Sir George was a wonderful traveler. Everything was laid out for the trip years before. Two years before it started, in- structions were sent out to every Hudson's Bay post to have everything ready for him, and everything was ready for him and worked in apple pie order. And he left Fort Vancouver in a small Hudson's Bay steamer, the Beaver, Capt. McNeil. A Cree Indian, called " Crooked Arm," who had guided the party from the Red River to the Pacific Coast, on being taken on board this wonderful paddle steamer, scratched his head and said: :< Would you be kind enough to give me a letter so I can show it to my people when I return, because I would not wish to pass for a liar. It is the biggest canoe I have ever seen. And one thing puzzles me. I know iron machinery drives this canoe, but what drives the iron machinery, I do not see. If I tell my people I have seen iron machinery that drives this big canoe without paddles or oars, I do not wish to pass for a liar, so would you be kind enough to give me a certificate ? " And they did.
The " Beaver " was a wonderful boat. She was wood-burn- ing, and Sir George Simpson tells us that the wooding of that boat occupied half the journey. She burnt forty cords of wood every twenty-four hours. But the most remarkable thing was that whenever the supply of fuel was exhausted, they drove the boat ashore, put the crew over with axes, chopped the wood, took it on, and off they went again.
Up through the Pacific islands as far as New Archangel, where the great Russian fur trading company had their main post, was the object of this northern trip of Sir George Simpson. On this trip were laid down the conditions which were followed in the treaty between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Rus- sian company, along the identical lines used at the arbitration court in 1905 in London, which went against Canada, and lost us the islands off the coast of British Columbia. The countries were clearly divided between the Russian and the Hudson's Bay Com-
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pany, which possessed the country under the name of " New Caledonia."
Sir George Simpson on landing at Sitka found the Russian governor magnificently installed, with cannon to guard the fort, a retinue of servants, and living as well as any Russian could live in that far distant country. The information he gained on that wonderful trip was most interesting. He says : " I thought I knew something of canoes and something about beavers, but traveling will always teach you. I saw a canoe belonging to the Balakala Indians measuring 60 feet long by 4.5 deep and 6.5 wide, cut out of one single tree. It carried one hundred men, fifty paddling and fifty lying in the bottom. This was one of the biggest boats I ever saw. Then," he adds, " I thought I knew something about beavers. Fancy my astonishment when right out on the sea coast, where the tide washed in and out, I dis- covered an enormous beaver dam peopled by a numerous colony of beavers, which thoroughly enjoyed the salt water."
Coming back to Fort Vancouver, Sir George Simpson took a steamer of the Hudson's Bay Company, called after the river Carlitz, and went down to California, where the Hudson's Bay Company took in some of its supplies, gradually inspecting every post as he went to find out new openings for trade, where it could be encouraged or something got. California was then in the hands of the Spaniards; Mexico had proclaimed her indepen- dence, but California had escaped being annexed to Mexico. Sir George little suspected that California would soon become the great State it is to-day, and gives details of the life as it was then in San Francisco, when her principal trade was in the exchange of hides and tallow.
He inspected the coast gradually down as far south as the peninsula of Lower California, and there, striking straight across, went over to the Island of Honolulu. It is strange to us that a company doing business so far north and in such an inclement climate, had most of their men coming from that tropical island of Honolulu. They were, he said, the best servants the company ever had. Reaching Honolulu and thoroughly enjoying the hos- pitality of the then reigning king, he took the schooner back straight up to Sitka. The conditions having been laid before the Russian governor on the first trip to be considered for two or three months, there and then the boundaries were settled.
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Whiskey was excluded from the trading of both companies, and in this connection a very strange detail is given. Sir George adds, " Before we could sign the treaty, which bound each company not to sell whiskey to the natives, three years delay had to be given to each company, to allow us to strengthen our forts, be- cause on a great many occasions the men manning these forts were too weak to keep off the Indians, and the only way to save their own lives was to get the Indians drunk."
Having settled his business in Sitka, Sir George Simpson took the Russian sailing barque called the " Alexandra," and, crossing the Pacific Ocean, landed at the north of Siberia in the Bay of Okhotsk, and went thence to St. Petersburg, traveling either by row boat, horseback, on foot or by droschki. In the space of ninety-one days Sir George Simpson and his friend covered seven thousand miles. Finally landing at St. Petersburg, he found an English barque and, taking passage there, landed at Hamburg, and four days afterwards was in London. Traveling for nineteen months, he had gone around the world, and accomplished the object for which he had started; it was considered, as it would be considered to-day, a wonderful achievement.
I have given you a brief sketch of the wonderful work done for this country in those days by these hardy voyageurs. This country has done very little for these men. But to-day we are reaping the benefit of their courage and energy — we are reaping where they sowed. Let us be, as we say in French, reconnaissant of their services. Why should not this country some day at the outlet of these great rivers erect a great big monument to these pioneers of the West?
229
[ A pril ist, 1912 ]
TRANSPORTATION
By HON. GEO. P. GRAHAM
I UNDERSTAND that the addresses before this club are on the short-haul principle — we are not supposed to get the benefit of long-distance carriage. I do not know how I can get along under such restrictions, but will go as rapidly as I can without violating the speed law.
This is a very appropriate day for you to ask me to Montreal to speak about transportation. I am not sure whether you meant it or not, but coming to the headquarters of the trans- portation experts I feel somewhat timid in endeavouring to tell what I think, or at least what I pretend to know about it. In going around the City of Montreal, particularly in the summer time, transportation problems have struck me very forcibly, and it has often been brought home to me that the roadway is the initial step in transportation. Streets are hard to build and keep up, I know; but in discussing the great question of transportation, we ought always to try and remember that the initial, the founda- tion part of this problem is the road which leads from the home of the consumer to the train or steamboat and back again, and that those who have only the roadways to use and seldom use the railways are entitled to have them so that their products can be carried just as cheaply and comfortably as possible. I am not going into the roadway question, because that is a very large one; but I just dropped that hint because in all the towns of Canada while there is a marked anxiety for railway, steamboat and land and water transportation, we are apt to forget that the initial point in transportation is the roadway which passes our own door.
Now, the railways of Canada are perhaps the most important part of our transportation system. A great deal of discussion
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has taken place with reference to the cost of railway. I do not wish to go into any controversial subject, but will just drop this hint, that there is just as much difference between the construc- tion of railways as the construction of houses. It would not be reasonable for me to say that, because William Jones lived in a $10,000 house and John Smith in a $20,000 house, Smith paid too much for his house — it all depends upon the house and what it is used for. And so it is in railroad construction. There is an immense distance between what was once called first-class rail- way construction and what is called railway construction to-day.
There are two systems of construction. The cheap way is to put ties down with little or no ballast, pay little attention to the curves and grades, get your steel down and commence busi- ness as soon as possible. Some people are in favor of that system in a new country, because it gets the consumer and producer together by a method of transportation which, while not the best, is ample for present needs. And then they can get a suffi- cient amount out of earnings for bettering the road. But the most modern method of building a railway works according to a standard, so that on the day it starts to haul traffic it can haul the biggest load any railway can haul. There is a difference of opinion amongst railway men which is the better method to take care of the great traffic Canada is developing; because in this age men cannot wait for a railway to be built and then wait ten years to perfect it. They want the best obtainable at the present time in order to be able to compete with people in another country as well as with their neighbors.
The difference in cost between even a i% grade and a 4-10% grade is sometimes 100%. Railway men, particularly operating men, know the difference of running a train at forty and fifty miles per hour is sometimes 100% in coal consumption. And as it is with running a railway or a locomotive, so it is with the construction of the road. The difference between a i% and 4-10% or 6-10% grade may mean 100%, so in making any com- parison of the cost of railways, remember that there are railways and railways. To get a standard for a road it is hard to get a fair and just decision as to whether the cost is right or not.
As to the cost of railways in Canada, the capitalization of most of the Canadian railways averages about $56,000 a mile. But this is including the branch lines, cheap lines as well as the
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more perfect main lines. There is a considerable difficulty at getting at the average cost of the railways on the continent, be- cause 75% of them have been in liquidation since they were first constructed, and sold under mortgage, so that perhaps the whole of the money invested in them does not appear. When you are inclined to think harshly of the railway companies, remember that they have most of them had great vicissitudes in their early days, and that now better times are just beginning to dawn upon them.
I might now for a few moments speak of the mileage of our railways. We have got twenty-six thousand miles of railway in Canada — the greatest mileage per head of population of any country in the world. In addition to that there are under con- struction at the present time about five thousand miles. This is a great record for the people of Canada. And when I add that in our waterways, our harbours, our canals and rivers we have spent according to population dollars where our neighbors have not spent dimes, you will see that the statement that Canada has shown more courage than any country in the world in the development of transportation is borne out by the facts. It is a question how much longer we should continue in this. My own opinion is that Canada can never stop developing her trans- portation facilities until every man in the Dominion has the fullest opportunity to get the greatest return for his labour every day.
Our condition in Canada with regard to transportation differs from the older lands. In Germany, the State and more partic- ularly the different provinces own their own railways, and these railways form a system, which in large measure comes under the jurisdiction of the federal authorities. I visited the German railways and found their passenger accommodations magnificent. The average haul is short, but the railway rates for freight per mile in Germany are more than double those in Canada. Some excuse is furnished in the short haul and the necessity for fre- quent loading and unloading. In Canada, I think we have at the present time, considering the sparseness of population and the vast extent of territory, pretty fair terms and freight rates from the companies.
In France the railway system is devised like their roads, radiating in all directions from one centre. France has en-
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deavoured not to have any competition in railway lines, but to control all the railway lines and distribute the traffic among the different lines whether they are company or federal property. There is something to be said in favor of that system, and in a country such as Canada where the federal authority take absolute control of traffic and rates, I am not sure that the time will not soon arrive when we should distribute the lines in different parts of Canada, particularly in the new country so as to prevent the spending of useless money for two or three lines where one could carry all the traffic.
We kave of course in Canada three great railway systems. Montreal is the headquarters of the greatest transportation company in the world, the C.P.R. That you can get on at Liverpool in charge of the C.P.R. and go right through with it to China is something of which Canadians should be proud. We have the G.T.P. and the Grand Trunk, two great systems interwoven into one, starting from Moncton in the east to Prince Rupert in the west. A portion of this road, 1,800 miles, is being built by the Dominion, and the rest by the G.T.P. And when completed this road from Prince Rupert to the City of Quebec, and from Quebec to Moncton will have a 6/10% grade on westbound traffic and 4/10% on eastbound — the easiest grades of any railroad in America for the same distance. That of course excepts the 21 miles through the Yellow Head Pass where there is a i% grade and where, when necessary, pusher engines will be used. It was said that the road was to be constructed on the same standard as the Grand Trunk between Montreal and Toronto, which is considered the model standard for this country. But as a matter of fact, the G.T.P. standard between Quebec and Prince Rupert is higher than that of the G.T.R. between Montreal and Toronto, so far as grades are concerned. And these low grades mean an increased amount of ton mileage one engine and one train can haul. It is stated by experts on a 4/10% grade the same locomotive can haul twice as much as with a i% grade intervening. So in this case the benefit to the consumer and producer in hauling their products will be evident to every one. The object of expending so much money in building a line of this high character is, that the freight rates to the people of Canada may be reduced, with a commensurate practical reduction in the distance be-
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tween the consumer and the producer, so as to enable the prod- ucts to be drawn from one place to another at reasonable rates with fair speed; that perishable products should be delivered with a retention of their original quality, unspoilt in transport; and that so far as the people are concerned, they should be car- ried at a fair rate, a reasonable speed and comparative safety and comfort.
Then you have in Montreal coming to you a railway system which has been poking its nose everywhere in Canada — the Canadian Northern. It is not satisfied merely to go over the ground, but it is going underground to your City. Mountains have no terrors for Mackenzie and Mann. They go right along and if there are mountains they can't get round they go under. I must congratulate Montreal on having this new line.
If I were to give vent to what I would like to say I would talk about a child which was in my own family for several years, the Intercolonial. So far as I know it is healthy and is improv- ing wonderfully and is doing quite well. It is our government railway and is at the present time giving satisfaction. But I want to say this, that it is of importance that the Intercolonial Railway should undergo a marked development and improve- ment during the next few years, no matter what the ultimate destiny of the road may be. The G.T.P. is now, or very shortly will be, built with its line to Moncton. The C.P.R. is at St. John, and the Canadian Northern will poke its nose in by some method. Now these lines must get not only to St. John, but to Halifax and the only method at present available from St. John to Halifax, between Moncton and St. John and between Moncton and Halifax is the Intercolonial. The G.T.P. has in its contract provision for running right over the Intercolonial between Moncton and St. John, and Moncton and Halifax. The government will have to proceed at once to double track the Intercolonial between St. John and Halifax, and provide for more extensive terminals at Halifax for winter traffic. Other- wise the great traffic which will be coming from the west to our ocean ports in winter will find no means of outlet, and what may have been congestion before will be double congestion in future unless this is done. Of course, this will mean a lot of expense to Canada, but Canada is not alarmed at expenditure in the development of transportation facilities.
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Then let us turn to water transportation for a few moments — it may be dangerous ground, but I have possession for the time being, and what I have in mind I am going to explode. Water transportation is absolutely necessary, no matter how much railway transportation you may have. And it is a fact that in that country or section of country where the greatest tonnage is carried by water, there also is the greatest tonnage carried by land. That is because where there is water trans- portation there is always a ruling spirit over the cost of railway transportation — water transportation is the regulator for that tonnage which goes nearest the water, even though it goes by land. Look at figures from any part of the world and you will find that what I have said is correct, that where there is larger water routes, there also will be larger railway tonnage.
Water transportation has been a good deal discussed in Canada and Montreal, and there are men looking at me who know a good deal more about it than I do. But I will express the opinion in the first instance that the harbor of Montreal is only in its infancy as yet. My own opinion is that this port is the key to the situation as to Canada retaining her carrying trade. A great deal of money has been spent, and well spent, during the last few years, developing her harbor. But it must be remembered that rapidly as this harbor has developed, traffic has developed still more rapidly, and instead of ceasing or restricting expenditure here, my own opinion is that a greater expenditure and greater speed will have to be used in the de- velopment of this harbor, if we are to retain for this route the great traffic from the west and the further east.
In this connection a difference of opinion has arisen as to the relative merits of two water routes, the Welland Canal and the Georgian Bay Canal. But it seems to me that it is a great mistake to discuss these two routes as though they must be antagonistic. Montreal would make a great mistake, I think, if she discussed the Welland and Georgian Bay Canals as al- ternate routes and antagonistic to each other. It has been said that the development of the Erie or Welland canals would encourage traffic to the American side by the rail and water route to Ogdensburg and Oswego. I have no fears of that kind, and I will tell you why. If the Welland Canal were so enlarged that the large lake vessels could be brought down,
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what would they go through? The Welland Canal. What for — to get to the Erie Canal? No, they could get that farther up at Buffalo. You say there is the canal from Oswego, but the Erie Canal is not 14 feet, although the St. Lawrence canals have been 14 feet for years. You say they would go by Ogdensburg: nonsense, they would never do that with the present 14 foot water routes and the cheap barge system they could provide. So far as my own opinion is concerned, I think that bugaboo has no foundation whatever, and I feel sure that if the Welland Canal were to be enlarged, it would bring you down here far more traffic than you are getting to-day. In addition to that, even if the Welland Canal is not to be enlarged, the Erie Canal is being enlarged at an expense to New York State of over $100,000,000. Even then it will not reach 14 feet, but if it reaches as much as that, if we are to retain what traffic we have and get more, we must provide something that will do some- thing more than compete with the Erie Canal. If we are to retain this trade and take care of the future business, the govern- ment should without delay construct the enlarged Welland Canal, so that the large lake vessels shall be able to come down to the head of the St. Lawrence canal system. I have discussed that question with many shippers and heard many varying opinions. One shipper showed me figures which convinced him that by bringing western traffic to the head of the St. Lawrence canal system, and there elevating it to barges it would provide a route good enough to compete with even a 14 foot Erie Canal.
Then turn from that to the Georgian Bay Canal, I am heartily in favor of the construction of that canal. It is a very large project, and will take many years to construct, and it is the history of all these large enterprises that they take more money than is originally estimated, as any of you who have built a house will know. The Georgian Bay Canal will be needed to handle the traffic between the east and the west — I believe that, and that it should be started without delay, as it will take many years to build. But if we are to start that and not the Welland, in the meantime the Erie Canal will steal our traffic; and it is a very hard problem to get traffic back — it would be much better to keep it when we have it.
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Without going into further details, these are two of the large problems affecting Canada. I do not pretend to know all about them, but I have given them a good deal of study, and I believe that if Canada is to hold the trade we have now, and gradually prepare for the greater trade between the east and west, these two projects should be started now and carried on as fast as possible and the funds of the Dominion will warrant, — and Canada's revenues are very buoyant, with a $40,000,000 surplus this year.
Then, in addition to the water transportation, we have the combination rail and water systems. Many who are familiar with the matter consider that this combination of rail and water, so far as Canada is concerned, furnishes the real solution of the transportation problem. I will not discuss that. My opinion is that we have to provide all three to meet the wants of a growing country like this.
Then there is another project in view to which I had the honor of giving practical shape a year or two ago — the Hudson Bay railway. I know a great many people are dubious about this, and I may as well admit at once that I think to a certain extent it is an experiment. But an experiment, or what was an ex- periment five years ago, may not be a very difficult problem five years hence, as you must know when you think of the im- provements to the St. Lawrence and the methods of trans- portation being so rapidly developed even in this part of the country; so it is pretty hard to say what may happen in another ten years.
But suppose the Hudson Bay road is built to Nelson or Churchill, and we have a line of steamships over the ocean to Liverpool or other European ports, then for a few months in the year at least it would help to relieve the annual congestion between east and west. As to distance this much may be pointed out that from Fort Churchill to Liverpool is practically the same mileage as from Montreal to Liverpool. This being so, if the congestion between east and west could be relieved in this way it would be a great thing, not only in giving better freight rates, but a readier access to the markets than can pos- sibly be had now. I know that a good deal of discussion has taken place as to style of ships required and that sort of thing, but that difficulty will probably be overcome, and this traffic
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will be of immense benefit to some portions of the west. In the far west now if they wish to ship live cattle or any perish- able freight of that kind, it means a very long railway haul, which is not only expensive, but on such a long journey the cattle or other stock go off in weight and condition and consequently in value.
It will not be long before Alberta is going to compete with some portions of Eastern Canada, not only in stock raising but also as a dairy country. I have seen in Alberta some of the finest butter I have ever seen anywhere, not even excepting the Eastern Townships. And if these perishable goods such as cattle and dairy products are to be raised there, by the Hudson Bay route they could be got to the European market with, say, two nights and one day on the train, and so to the steamships with a cool route all the way to the Old Land — that would mean a great deal for the retention of quality and weight on the way to market, and that would mean the solution of a great transportation problem. We in the east so far as these products are concerned will have to keep an eye out, or the west will before long beat us in the markets of Europe. But of course we are all one, east and west, and this will lead to a healthy rivalry.
Another alternative route was proposed a few weeks ago, with steamers across James Bay to connect with a railway connection to the G.T.P. I have not studied that route very much, but I am told it means the shortest haul from the west to the east, about 600 miles better than the present railway and lake haul — I give you the figures as they were given me a few days ago. It may be useful as an alternative. But if the Hudson Bay route proves practical, then, perhaps, this alternative route will not be used.
One more thing. Notwithstanding the facilities we may secure and the money we may spend another thing presses itself home, and that is the control of the great corporations in their operations. As between themselves and the public, I can say without fear of contradiction that the Dominion has the most advanced system of control of the railways found in any country in the world to-day, with its Board of Railway Commissioners. A great many people say they have not done this, that and the other thing, but you must remember that their
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work is very difficult and that it takes many years to bring it to perfection. But I have looked at the Acts governing public utilities and other similar bodies in different parts of the world, and the nearest approach to ours is the Interstate Commerce Commission in the United States, but our system is more simple, while our Commission has greater powers than theirs. It is more simple because in the States there is more opportunity to go from their Commerce Commission to the courts than there is from our Railway Commission to the courts. My object has always been to make it a railway commission with as little red tape as possible, so that the ordinary citizen could appear be- fore it and get speedy justice without ceremony, and without any chance of anyone taking the case into a court of law.
I was asked time and again when I was minister why I did not appoint someone to prosecute and regulate things. I, of course, have the greatest respect for the legal fraternity, but I always replied, "No, not in this case." It was the endeavor of that government, and is, I believe, of the present government, to have that tribunal one without any fuss and feathers, and to make it as cheap as possible to appear before it; so that the farmer with a farm crossing trouble can have access to it and secure speedy judgment as soon as the president of the greatest transportation company in Canada.
Another very important question has arisen in the Dominion, the control by the Board of Railway Commissioners over rail- ways having provincial charters. I endeavored as far as I possibly could to bring every railway under the Railway Com- mission, having the utmost faith in that body. During the past four years in every subsidy contract, in every statute giving any railway company a subsidy, there was inserted a clause providing that that company by accepting that subsidy must submit its rates and operations to the Board of Railways of the Dominion of Canada.
Montreal was very much interested in a case some time ago, although it did not altogether come under that category. As I understand it, the Privy Council gave a ruling that the Domin- ion Railway Board had no jurisdiction under Section 8 of the Railway Act, by which we tried to give them jurisdiction over a company having a provincial charter. That being the case, it is very necessary that we should hang on to the contracts
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we make a provision that any person to whom we give a sub- sidy must submit to the Commission. If the company in ques- tion had received a subsidy during the past seven or eight years, we would have had them under the contract, although not under the Act. So it is necessary, and I believe the people of Canada will approve, that we should insist that wherever a railway company with a provincial charter accepts a subsidy from the Dominion treasury they should submit themselves to the fed- eral authority so far as the Board of Railway Commissioners is concerned.
Little wonder that during the last few days I took such a strong stand on that point in reference to a railway chartered in a province but forming part of a trans-continental line, with a provincial charter containing a clause which precluded that the Railway Commission should have any control. I took the ground in the House of Commons, and I take it publicly before you as business men, that the federal government should not give a dollar to any company which will not allow its rates to be regulated by the federal authority.
We have passed a law giving a subsidy to the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario, the Ontario government railway, and again this question arose. The position I maintain is that this is not politics, but the business of transportation. If even a provincial road is excluded from the working of our Act, it ex- cludes the provincial roads from the federal jurisdiction. But if they take a federal subsidy, I maintain that as far as through rates are concerned, that does not interfere with their domestic arrangements; but if they are part of a trans-continental system, so far as through rates are concerned, they should be under the jurisdiction of the Railway Commission. I will show you why. If you ship a carload of goods to Winnipeg or Saskatoon on the Grand Trunk, which has running rights over that road, and so the cost is divided, it must be evident to every man that if the Board of Railway Commissioners is to be of any use on that line, they must be able to regulate the through rate from Mon- treal to Winnipeg, and if a company is able to step in in the middle of it for two or three hundred miles it would be an im- possible situation. I am glad to say that the present Prime Minister, so far as the Ontario railroad is concerned, has taken that view, and the subsidy bill as passed provides that it should
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not go into force at once, and in the meantime, he promised to see if arrangements to cover this point could not be arrived at.
Regarding transportation as an optimist I have this in mind, that we should go on in the way we have in the past. We have in Canada the advantage in our railway and transportation problem, particularly by water, because we on this side of the line own the gateway to the Atlantic ocean, the St. Lawrence River, and can start from the head of the Great Lakes to Liver- pool without getting outside our own territory, and without going into anyone else's territory, of course, with the exception of the high seas.
Our friends across the line have not that advantage, be- cause at Cornwall their traffic enters Canada altogether and comes under our control so far as traffic to Montreal is concerned, and they must go through all Canadian territory down the St. Lawrence to the sea. Nature has thus given us a great advan- tage, also in the Georgian Bay, that old route which centuries ago the voyageurs took, and which seems to have been made by Nature to provide a means of water transportation between the east and the west, far from the boundary and the pos- sibility of any foreign interference. It should be a matter of national pride as well as in the interests of transportation to have that route completed. And when it is completed and we have that route joining with our other great water and land transportation routes, I look forward to the time when Canada will not only do her own carrying trade, but will stand in the proud position on this continent of not only doing her own, but also doing a large share of the carrying trade of our great neighbors to the south.
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[ April I5th, 1912 ]
DOWN EAST
By PRINCIPAL MACKENZIE
Dalhousie College, Halifax
I BELIEVE you in Montreal have put forth some modest claims to being considered a sort of eastern port at the end of a long water alley. But we have a port in the east, almost to be compared to the poles, since it is terra incognita to most Canadians. A group of new explorers is required, made up of capitalists and men of that class; and if this were done I should not be surprised if it became the best known port in Canada.
The first questions are obvious, is there anything there when you find it, and have we advertised it? As an easterner I can say we have been too modest about our accomplishments. We have tried to make others believe us when we said we had a very fine wealth of bulging intellectual foreheads and kept an over- stock of professors for the rest of the continent and any amount of grey matter behind the counter for the export trade.
We have also tried not to keep it too quiet that men like Johnson, Archibald, Tupper, Howe and the rest who fought for responsible government and engendered the spirit which has been so manifest in Confederation, came from our province — and you might have heard it claimed that it is as a result of their work that you now enjoy a certain amount of legislative and political liberty. In this connection I might remark that I hope you are going to help us this summer to celebrate the erection of the memorial tower at the West Arm at Halifax to such men as these. It will be dedicated by H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught to celebrate the i5Oth anniversary of responsible government in Canada — the first of any of the units of the Empire to gain it.
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The men who conceived that idea, Sandford Fleming and George L. Grant, saw a vision of the barren north filling with settlers and growing an ocean of wheat; so they crossed the continent to the western Canadian pole, and annexed it as a sort of country club on the purlieus of Nova Scotia. From that province we have sent you premiers, attorneys-general, doctors, lawyers, preachers and so on. And if we were capable of such a thing, you might have heard us boast that we had an eighty page literary magazine and were producing authors when this great West was yet unborn. And sometimes we boast of our number of colleges. Nova Scotia, with a popula- tion of half a million, has about the same number of degree conferring institutions as the provinces of Ontario and Quebec combined. But Dalhousie, with 400 students, excluding divinity students, has about as many as all the rest put together. And I claim that we have the most God-fearing, law-abiding race outside the French-Canadians of Quebec — a province where religious and philanthropic institutions flourish.
That is one side of the picture. But what do we claim for the things Nature has done for us ? We have made no concerted effort to be silent as to our great mineral and other material resources, and we have tried to make it known that we have a pleasant, healthful and bracing climate anywhere in Nova Scotia. It is not too hot and not too cold, but just exactly right; to say nothing of the fact that we have the most con- foundedly slow paced 3 months of imitation spring of any place yet known on the map. And we have coal, such as is talked about in story books, in abundance, right up to the water's edge and under the water; while in many sections we have iron up against the coal, so that the dropping of a lighted match might make the whole country one great steel works.
Then we are stuck out into the centre of the most extensive and valuable deep sea fishing grounds in the world, as well as the largest available inshore fisheries — we have everything to give us the advantage over every competitor, and yet we are not happy. You must have heard us talk about our orchards in the Annapolis Valley, which last year produced a million and a half barrels of apples. And I need not tell you of the many other things. And yet, to use Kipling's phrase, we have not found ourselves. Gifted with a population of intelligence, such
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as must be granted us, and endowed, according to the experts, with a wealth of material resources, we still have not increased in population as we should. I do not for a moment admit that this is the best evidence of the progress of a country, but it is the commonly accepted one. It would, however, be rash for me to try and offer a complete explanation of this difficult problem and I am not going to try, but will make an effort to show some of the reasons for our lack of growth.
In the first place we have not found ourselves. You remem- ber our native author, Haliburton, in his Sam Slick, accuses the Blue Noses of shiftlessness, dullness, lack of initiative, and a love for wasting time on fruitless discussion of religious and political affairs. There was truth in his saying, and you will still find plenty of that class there. But that is not the general explanation, nor is it the true picture of the present condition; although, like a good caricature, it contains too many near truths to be comfortable. Haliburton picked out the failings and faults of the people of his native province, and tried by exaggerating the picture to make them clear themselves, and bring forth things more typical of our country.
In the first place we are a most conservative people — not in a political sense, of course. So far as that goes, we are Conserva- tive or Liberal as Ottawa is Conservative or Liberal. When we send up a Tupper or Thompson, Ottawa is Conservative, while if we send up a Fielding, Ottawa is Liberal, and then if we send up a Borden, Ottawa is Conservative again, and so we keep pace with each other.
At the same time we are a very conservative, although a very wandering people. As our country has grown up our sons have gone to the West, to do there what their sires did for us. Instead of taking the good things left, their instincts led them to go out and carve out new homes; while many have caused us an irreparable loss by going to the United States. In the old days many of our people found employment in the wooden ship- building industry. It seems to have taken their fancy, but they do not seem to have the same instinct for the multifarious phases of modern activity. They stayed so long in the West Indian shipping industry that when it declined they seemed to think their particular mode of living had gone out of existence> and they were not ripe for a change.
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The excuse is often made that they had not the necessary capital. There is a measure of truth in that, but I doubt if it is a valid excuse. I am more inclined to think it was due to the decline in this particular trade, together with the derange- ment of trade channels, caused by confederation, which depressed their self-reliance. Losing the old venturesomeness of our marine, they developed overcaution, which will explain much that we have suffered. In fact, the capital was there, but it was salted away in banks; just as a period of overcaution will follow an outburst of unreasoning speculation. And when they awoke some years afterwards, it was to find much of their trade had been taken away from under their very noses by the Yankees, and Gloucester had become rich and prosperous on the trade that Halifax and Lunenburg had been doing. The recapture of that fishing industry was a slow process, but now we are almost masters of our own again.
Another factor which tended to determine the early history of Nova Scotia was the character of her early settlers. There were two classes in her early population. First, there was a strong infusion of Highlanders, and the Highlander is reputed to be a great money maker, because he is not given to lavishness, and at that time sixpences were pretty rare — thrift was a neces- sity of life to the early settler, and money was a very rare article. The settler's idea was often far from the accumulation of wealth, and the same spirit is often manifest amongst his rural descen- dants to-day. The Highland mother would far rather see her son in a minister's pulpit or a professor's chair, poor and with a seedy coat, than see him a good comfortable city business man. No sacrifice was too great to get her son a profession, and to secure the highest ideal for her daughter, that she should be a minister's wife. But you would go far to find them do the same thing to start a son in business — yet this was one of the causes of the influence the Nova Scotians have exerted over the rest of the country.
In going West their instincts were the same. They marched by the fertile and easily tilled portions of that country — they were naturally drawn to the hills, and made themselves homes in the most inaccessible places, where the land was the hardest to clear and then the least useful for cultivation, and where the sacrifices to give their sons the education they could not get
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themselves was the greatest. An education won by that sort of spirit was not lightly to be undertaken, so the young men put their whole spirits into it, and thus you have the source of the steady stream of professors and statesmen coming from these poor Scotch farms and doing so much for the progress of the Dominion; while they are not unknown across the border.
The other element of the population I want to mention so that you may understand something of the changing character- istics of our people is the large number of the civil and military administrative class in the early days. These were well educated people of a refined type, but they were rather given to routine and a dependence upon the Mother Country than to the self- reliance of the pioneer. They imported their tastes and were eager to replant their cultivated mode of life, which in the long time that Halifax remained a military and navy garrison port, had a marked influence upon the people. As one consequence the people there became revictuallers and refiners of ships rather than keen trading men.
Now the fact that we have not brought out our resources, while others have not come to us to do this for us or for them- selves, has no obvious explanation. Everybody knows that there is nothing so accessible as capital when it sees opportunity for profitable investment; as you know in this city where so much of your wealth is back of our mines and forests. But capital does not flow into Nova Scotia in any degree commen- surate with her possibilities.
One thing, however, must not be overlooked and that is that our resources are already partially developed and have their value fairly well defined, so that we can offer no inducement to that vast body of speculative capital which is so much in evi- dence all over the continent, investing in forests and towns which may be worth nothing to-day, and suddenly develop millions by the advent of a railway.
We have nothing like that to offer. But to capital which is content with good dividends on projects carried out by legitimate energetic effort there seems every inducement. There is no fighting against Nature, no extracting resources from the soil, no severe winter, no great heat, and since no part of the country is more than 30 miles from the sea there is abundant trans- portation.
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Yet capital does not come in, and it makes me think there must be something in fashion and example, and that there must be truth in the axiom " Westward the star of empire takes its way." Whether or not that means a law of Nature so that we in the east must wait until that star gets around to us again, it is certain that good fields for investment in the east are often neglected for less valuable ones in the west.
True, we have not grown in population as we might have done, but that is not the only criterion of the true progress of a country. It was claimed by one of our statesmen the other day that in not opening our coal fields all at the same time we were doing a wise thing, as by not developing our natural resources too fast we were leaving a reserve for the future. I am not political economist enough to say whether that argument is logical, but if carried to its extreme it might lead to present starvation, which would be rather too severe a form of conserva- tion.
But we can say we have not wasted all or even part of our resources. But is it not the test of the progress of any country whether it produces well for that population which it has — does it offer its citizens proper conveniences, comforts, luxuries even? Does it provide proper facilities for cultural and educational advance, and opportunities for travel? Does it care well for the conservation of law and order? And again does it give the proper kind of care to its own unfortunates? Measured accord- ing to these standards, you will find a very fortunate race there down east — one that really deserves and asks no sympathy. There might be more of them: some may be thankful for that. There might be more automobiles, but that would hardly interest college professors. There might be more money, which would enable better schools and colleges, more extensive trans- portation schemes, which I think we would appreciate, but on the whole I think we have mighty little to grumble at.
And the lack of money and these things has produced for us a sturdy, hardy race of people who must be of value to any country. We think that we are making a contribution to the permanent and stable advance of our country in breeding this race of sturdy, strong conservative men, and especially in sending them out to carve out on the plastic plains of the west such a series of broad Canadian centres as will ensure that for all time
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that western country will be true to British ideals, with fair government and free institutions.
Our Dalhousie schools in law, arts, music, etc., have had a constant and bitter criticism, because it is claimed we are wasting our resources, that we are simply training men to go to the West or elsewhere so that the East loses their valuable services and citizenship. All this would be very true if we had not more than enough left to go around. But whether that be the case or not, I feel that it is just in this way that we at Dalhousie are doing our very best work. It is making the work of our college more to be desired and more virile. Morever, the future of the West is not the future of the West alone: nor is it to be measured by the millions of bushels of wheat it can produce. Surely from the standpoint of thinking people its future is to be measured in the breadth of its foundations on a national ideal. How can this be better secured than by sending men to occupy her pulpits and schools and to interpret law in the courts to that heterogeneous element, and doctors to attend them in sickness and death, who will uphold such ideals? And where can we find men better able to do that than the sturdy men from the East — from Halifax, which so long has been a centre of all that is best in British civilization and tradition, and the people around, all steeped in British traditions of national and personal duty. We feel that we can send men there who will be a benefit to that country. The country's gain may be our loss, but I think we are patriotic enough not to whimper, and I hope you will believe me when I say that Nova Scotia, Down East, is not such a bad place after all.
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[ April 22, IQI2 ]
CANADA AND IMPERIAL DEFENCE THE DUTY OF THE HOUR
By JOHN WILLIAMSON, M.A.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:
THE defence of the Empire is the most serious problem for British statesmen throughout the world. The dangers that threaten do not grow less but greater; at the mo- ment the situation is more serious perhaps than at any time within the present generation. "We had a crisis three years ago. We are now within sight of another crisis far more grave in its character. The situation is more grave to-day than it was in 1909." So writes Mr. Archibald Hurd in the "Fortnightly Re- view" for April, in an article on "The New Naval Crisis and the Oversea Dominions," calculated to give food for very serious reflection to every thoughtful Canadian.
The political equilibrium of Europe is disturbed. Many ques- tions of international importance are still unsettled. Some of the great world-powers are striving after territorial and colonial expansion at the cost of their weaker neighbors, and for political ideals it is impossible to reconcile; while problems are arising which no international court of arbitration, but only the sword, can solve. Last year Europe and the British Empire were brought to the verge of war by the "incident" of Agadir, and the dispute between Germany and France about Morocco; and a similar situation may arise at any moment, the only certainty being that it will come when it is least expected.
It is no use, therefore, ostrich-like, to bury our heads and refuse to see the danger. To be weak or unprepared is to invite attack, which will come just as surely as the chance of its success. The only security for a nation is the proof it can offer that any such attempt, even by the most unscrupulous of enemies, is
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doomed to fail. That is the merest truism, and it is satisfactory to note how much progress has been made in the discussion of this question and how much agreement there is now on the main issue.
I. THE NEED OF THE HOUR.
For a century the supremacy of the British fleet throughout the world has been unquestioned. But this supremacy consisted mainly in warships of the pre-Dreadnought class, and ever since the introduction of this new type of battleship it has been steadily diminishing. All ships of the former type will soon be obsolete ; in a year or two only those of the Dreadnought type will count as efficient. In the rebuilding of their modern fleets, therefore, the great nations have started on a level much nearer an equality, and the naval supremacy of Britain, to its most aggres- sive rival, has seemed to be indisputable no longer, but even capable of being minimized, if not completely destroyed. Hence the feverish activity visible at present in the naval dockyards of all the great powers of the world.
For, according to the best authorities, the strength of a mod- ern navy is to be measured solely by battleships of the Dread- nought type, with their attendant cruisers, destroyers, submarines and others. The late war between Russia and Japan "showed that the decisive factor in a naval engagment was the primary armament of heavy weapons — twelve-inch or larger guns — and the need in consequence of a ship to carry the greatest number of such guns, with the highest speed." (Fortnightly Review.) Hence the enormous and rapidly increasing expenditure incurred in the race for naval supremacy. By 1915 all the pre-Dread- nought ships will be practically useless, and if the supremacy of the Imperial navy throughout the world is to be maintained, the entirely new navy now in process of construction must be brought up to its full strength as speedily as possible.
At the close of 1911 the strength of the British navy in Dreadnought ships — completed, launched, building and projected was 30; while that of the Triple Alliance was 33: Germany, 23; Austria, 4; Italy, 6. France, it is true, has two launched and two building, and Russia has four launched; but it is a question whether these eight ships will be ready for sea before the end of 1914, when all those of the Triple Alliance may be in service.
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It is the fixed purpose of Germany to have a fleet equal to that of Great Britain. Why? Such a fleet is not necessary to her position as a first-class power; she has no great colonies through- out the world to protect; her position is not insular but con- tinental; she does not, therefore, depend upon the open sea as the great highway, not merely for the commerce but for the very food of her people. To the British Empire, however, the pos- session of such a fleet is an absolute necessity. Without the unquestioned supremacy of the sea, the British Empire could not hold together for a week, and the population of the United King- dom, like that of a besieged city, might speedily be reduced by absolute starvation.
In 1901 the total naval expenditure of Germany amounted to £9,530,000; in 1911 it was over £22,000,000, and during those ten years the total expenditure was £206,000,000. For the aim, clearly stated in the preamble to the Navy Bill of 1900, is still being steadily pursued: "Germany must have a fleet of such strength, that, even for the greatest naval power, a war with her would involve such risks as to imperil its own supremacy." By 1915, according to their present programmes, Great Britain will have thirty Dreadnoughts to twenty-three of Germany. But by then eight British ships must be stationed in the Mediter- ranean to preserve the balance of power there against the rapid growth of other fleets.
In face of facts like these, therefore, what is the imperative duty of the hour for British statesmen throughout the world? The answer is simple. It admits of no discussion. It is a matter of life and death for the Empire as a whole and for each of its parts. According to the opinion of all who claim to speak with knowledge and authority, the only standard of safety to adopt in face of the keen competition of Germany is now to lay down two keels to her one; and this standard the leading statesmen of both the great political parties in England are determined to maintain at any cost. The duty of the hour is therefore clear. By all the different members of the Empire assuming each its fair share of the burden, the Imperial navy without delay must be put into and maintained in a position of such overwhelming strength that no single power, however ambitious of "a place in the sun," or probable combination of hostile powers, shall ever be tempted seriously to contest its supremacy. Is there in the
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whole of Canada a single individual who dares seriously to dis- pute it?
But the burden of this defence is great and hitherto has fallen almost exclusively upon the United Kingdom. Of the vast burden of the public debt, which costs £25,000,000 a year, a large portion was incurred, as Canadians among others have just been forcibly reminded, "in securing the favoured lands in which they live and prosper." The whole cost, too, of the Dip- lomatic and Consular services of the Empire and of the Crown falls on the United Kingdom. Last year it spent £72,000,000 on the army and navy, for the defence, not merely of the United Kingdom, but of the Empire as a whole; and this vast sum must soon be increased. In the year 1909-10 the people of the United Kingdom spent £35,807,000 upon the Imperial navy, while all the other colonies together gave less than half a million pounds. (Canada gave nothing.) Under the new arrangement with the Admiralty there has been a slight improvement. But the mon- strous anamoly still continues. While this year the people of the United Kingdom are taxed to the extent of £45,000,000 for the Imperial navy alone, or about one pound per head for every man, woman and child in the country, New Zealand gives at the rate of 5/- per head of population, Australia 3/-, and Canada, by far the richest of the lot, spends a paltry i/ij in the least effec- tive way. That is a condition of things humiliating to every self-respecting Canadian to whatever creed or party he belongs, and is absolutely intolerable.
II. THE DUTY OF THE HOUR
The white population of the oversea dominions is now about equal to one-third of the population of the United Kingdom, and their interests in the Empire are at least equal in proportion. In all fairness then they should at once assume a share of responsi- bility for the maintenance of the Imperial navy much more in keeping with their population and material resources.
To defend the Empire, fleets of the Imperial navy should at present be maintained in full strength in the English Channel and the North Sea, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific, east and west. Would it, therefore, be an extravagant idea to sug- gest that Canada, along with Australia, New Zealand and Cape Colony should assume the burden of maintaining — say, in the
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Pacific Ocean — a fleet equal in strength to at least that of Japan, which, by the end of 1915, will have a fleet of eight Dreadnought battleships; and this year is spending £8,803,000 on her navy — about one-fifth of the total expenditure of the United Kingdom? While India might fairly be called upon to make up another fleet-unit in the nearer East for the protection of its own shores and the Persian gulf, as she maintains her own army of defence. The duty of Canadians at all events is clear. For Canada, as for the United States, the old policy of isola- tion from the world is no longer possible. That the people on this continent should be able to work out their own destiny in peace, far removed from the feverish unrest of the Old World, was a dream never to be realized by the restless spirits of the race to which the most of them belonged. Canada now has vital interests throughout the world. In the year 1910 her total sea- borne trade in exports and imports with the British Empire and other countries, exclusive of the United States and Mexico, amounted to $337,676,851, and with the British Empire alone, to $227,676,851. Her sea-going tonnage entered and cleared was 20,814,313 tons, exclusive of coasting and inland tonnage. And are there no Canadian interests at stake in the Pacific? What boundless possibilities of trade expansion in the near future with Japan, now a world-power of the first rank; with China slowly waking up from its sleep of a thousand years; and with the open- ing of the Panama Canal? To what difficult political questions, too, must all this inevitably give rise? What vast interests, actual and possible; and what corresponding liabilities! Surely the last has now been heard of the inane talk that the defence of these interests was of no consequence to Canadian statesmen. Even the so-called Nationalists have at length grudgingly to admit as much. But what they do not or will not see is that a further step must still be taken: Canada alone cannot defend itself. Can- ada is a great country and her people resolute and brave as any in the world. But what could they do by themselves to defend their vast interests on the continent of North America, on the Atlantic, and on the Pacific? What, for example, against the hundred millions of the great nation to the south? Or against Japan with its forty millions burning with the desire of maritime supremacy in the Pacific? About seven millions of white people are now in possession of a continent on which a population of
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a hundred millions, or even twice that number, might live in such material comfort as the world has not yet seen. But across the Pacific Ocean about one-third of the human race lives hopelessly congested, who will soon be compelled to move outwards by an irresistible economic pressure from within. Canadians are determined — rightly so — to make Canada a white man's country. But how will this be possible if these teeming millions of the yellow race are also determined at all costs to have a share of it? Could Canada by itself within any measurable distance of time, ever or- ganise a defensive force on a scale at all commensurate with such needs as these? The thing is impossible. The only alternative would be to exist by sufferance of the United States, as Cuba, or Mexico, or Panama exists, and have the same degree of indepen- dence. In any case Canada could not thus stand alone. To preserve even the barest form of independence it would need an alliance with some other power. To secure this on equal terms would be impossible. And on any terms it would mean the maintenance of a military and naval force compared with which any demands to be made upon it as a member of the British Empire would be as nothing.
It is not a question of helping England merely, as the mother- land. At this time of the day it seems absurd to have to urge a point so obvious. And yet it is curious to note how this idea still lingers in the minds of some, and perhaps unconsciously colors much of the discussion. "The present ministers" (of Sir W. Laurier) we are told by one, "are endeavouring to induce the colonists to use their power of self-taxation for the benefit of the mother country." "Soldiers and seamen is what England needs, and to extort such help from the colonists she resorts to every available form of attraction." And as late as August last Mr. Bourassa, in a pamphlet printed for distribution among his French compatriots, writes to the effect that the agreement en- tered into between the Canadian Government and the British Admiralty had been entered into on the same basis as previous arrangements — apparent preservation of the principle of autono- my but gradual concentration of the Empire for the benefit of Eng- land— and that this policy of the government offered to England the double advantage of relief to its budget and the free use of war vessels — and so on.
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All this, however, is the merest travesty of the truth. Such talk serves only to obscure the real issue and is misleading and mischievous. Primarily, the question is not one of helping Eng- land, but of defending Canada itself in the only way possible; and from this point of view it is no longer a question of mere academic interest, but in the present temper of the world one of life and death. And yet, for England in the narrow sense, sub- stitute the British Empire which is more than England, and it is true: Canadians are asked, as all citizens throughout the Em- pire are asked — and it should be their highest duty and privilege — to defend not only Canada but the Empire as a whole. For the time has come when Mr. Bourassa and all those who think with him must be reminded in set terms that Canadians are also citizens of the British Empire, which, with all its faults, stands for the highest ideals in civilization that humanity has yet reached, and represents an inheritance of moral and material interests of world-wide importance, in which Canadians have a share and of which on no terms or conditions do they mean to be deprived.
Whatever form it may finally assume, of any Canadian policy worthy of the name, these at least must be fundamental axioms: its ships must be of the latest model and second to none in effi- ciency and strength; they must be placed where their services are most needed; and they must be ready at a moment's notice to take their assigned place in the Imperial navy, not skulking away in some hidden corner where they are useless, but in the very front of the line of battle, wherever that may be.
It was here the policy of the late government proved a fail- ure. That policy had great merits. It lifted the main issue out of the rut of mere party politics, into which it must never again be allowed to fall. It got the Dominion parliament to recognize an urgent duty; and in the circumstances that marked a real advance. It made provision for ship-building in Canada, and this too was a decided gain. For it is well to have throughout the Empire as many independent points as possible where yards for ship-building, naval arsenals and stores can be provided. But the policy of Sir Wilfred Laurier did not go far enough; and there- fore, what it did in an attempt at compromise, where compromise is inadmissable, was worse than useless. It was ineffective. The ships proposed were practically obsolete, and the money
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to be spent on them might just as well have been thrown into the sea, so far as any real and efficient help to the Imperial navy was concerned. And it was surely the height of absurdity to suppose that when the British Empire was at war, Canada might choose whether she should be at war or not, or whether her proposed flotilla would be placed at the disposal of the Imperial authorities or not? Such a beggarly proposal stood on the face of it condemned as inept and inefficient from the first.
The present government is doubtless acting wisely in taking time to mature a well-considered scheme which when produced will, it is hoped, commend itself to the country as a whole, irre- spective of party. If such a scheme provides for the gradual establishment of ship-building yards and arsenals, years will be required for its elaboration on an effective scale. But it is dis- appointing that so far nothing has been done. While Australia and New Zealand are now represented by two ships of the latest design and highest efficiency, Canada has done nothing.
Any scheme worthy of the Canadian people must provide for the construction of battleships of the latest Dreadnought type. Why then has a beginning not been made in this direction? In any case, two years must be spent in building them, and by the time the full scheme has been matured, some ships at least would be ready to take their place in it without further unnecessary delay.
This year there was a surplus in the treasury of over $30,- 000,000, and the cost of a battleship of the latest type is estimated at about $9,000,000. Out of the surplus of this year alone, therefore, three of the most powerful ships afloat might have been built and equipped and not a soul in Canada been the poorer by a cent or felt the cost as a burden in the least degree. The Dominion Government might very well indeed have made a pres- ent, unconditionally, of three such ships to the Imperial navy, as a very tardy and after all but slight recognition of a duty it has been too long in recognizing. The moral effect of such an act upon the other nations of the world would have been incalcu- lable, at the very lowest estimate quite equal to the grant of three additional ships.
Is expert advice required for the shaping of our future policy? The British Admiralty is at hand, the highest experts in naval strategy in the world. To them all nations go to be instructed,
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and their secrets are carefully sought by their most formid- able rivals. In this case, however, their deliberate opinion is on record. To the Imperial Conference of 1909 they reported: "If this problem of Imperial naval defence were considered merely as a problem of naval strategy, it would be found that the greatest output of strength for a given expenditure is obtained by the maintenance of a single navy, with the concomitant unity of training and unity of command. In furtherance then of the simple strategical ideal, the maximum of power would be gained if all parts of the Empire contributed according to their needs and resources to the maintenance of the British (Imperial) navy." And, as a recent critic has said: "In enunciating this principle, which is merely an elaboration of the axiom that union is strength, the Admiralty stated a proposition the truth of which no one, certainly no naval officer, would attempt to controvert. There is not a naval officer in the British service who does not realize that a single navy, with the concomitant unity of training and unity of command is the reasonable and economical and sound principle upon which to defend the united people of a united Empire." (Fort. Rev.) You cannot defend the British Empire, as has been well said, in watertight compart- ments. Small fleets scattered up and down the world, of obsolete ships, are worse than useless. The fundamental principle of naval strategy and the best form of defence is to clear the seas of the enemy's ships even at the very ends of the earth.
These truths are so elementary, so self-evident as to be the merest commonplace. Not to recognize them, not to act upon them, deliberately to ignore them, is to incur a responsibility of the gravest kind. If, however, for other reasons, political or otherwise (they would not at least be economic, as sea-power in Canada would cost from thirty to fifty per cent, more than in England) the present Government, like their predecessors, should decide upon a separate fleet for Canada, good and well; the great thing is to get something done as speedily as possible. Such a fleet, however, to be effective must be a real "fleet-unit," not a "baby-fleet," as such efforts have been contemptuously termed. It must be composed of two or more battleships, with the neces- sary complement of cruisers, destroyers, etc., and this will take some years to organize. Above all it must have its proper place in the distribution of the Imperial navy, be subject to its dis-
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cipline, and pass automatically and at once under the direction of the Imperial authorities the moment its services are needed. For the sake of clearness let me summarize what has been said.
(1) In the interests of all its parts and for the sake of the peace and progress of the world, it is essential that the British Empire should be maintained.
(2) An Imperial (not British) navy is therefore needed to hold unquestioned supremacy of the sea throughout the world.
(3) No single portion of the Empire can stand alone or defend itself. It would inevitably gravitate to or be absorbed in the larger sphere of some other world-power. For the day of small states is gone. They exist only by the sufferance of their more powerful neighbors.
(4) Canada, therefore, can defend herself only by taking part along with its other members in a scheme of general defence of the Empire as a whole, where the strength of all may be available for the defence of each.
(5) But as loyal citizens of a world-wide Empire Canadians are also directly interested in maintaining an inheritance of which they do not mean to be deprived.
(6) It is desirable that there should be independent points throughout the Empire for the building and equipment of ships of war, naval arsenals, etc., and therefore provision should be made for these in Canada.
(7) But in the meantime something should be done. Out of the surplus of last year the Dominion Government might well have made a free gift to the Imperial navy of at least three of the most powerful battleships afloat. And a beginning should be made at once of the construction, in England, of two or three other similar ships to be ready to take their place in any scheme when finally adopted.
These are propositions so self-evident that when placed before their minds they must commend themselves to the great majority of moderate and reasonable men.
With some slight modifications the plan so zealously advo- cated by the Star newspaper of this city, which in this respect deserves the thanks of those who have at heart the highest wel- fare of the country, may well commend itself to all as at least, for a beginning of our naval policy, the best under the existing
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circumstances. But, after all, these are questions of detail. The great thing is to have clear ideas upon the main issues and prin- ciples and to get a substantial beginning made at once of a real and efficient contribution to the Imperial navy.
III. OBJECTIONS.
Before closing let me notice briefly some objections urged against the policy now suggested.
I. The question whether there is any British Empire at all hardly admits of discussion. Because in the evolution of its his- tory the British Empire has grown so vast that a centralized government of the whole is no longer possible, nor desirable; and because the principle of self-government for local affairs has been extended to provinces and whole dominions covering wide areas, does it follow that the Empire as a whole has ceased to be, or that the separation of its parts is absolute? If, because of the pressure of increasing danger it has become to its leading statesmen the greatest problem they have now to face, so to organize its defence by land and sea that it may be made invul- nerable against attack from any quarter; and if, because part of this herculean task has been entrusted to some portions of the Empire by themselves, does it therefore follow that the Empire itself, built up by the heroic self-sacrifice of many generations, has therefore been dissolved, like some great empires of the past, in a number of petty states?
Because Canada, for example, has, step by step, secured a measure of autonomy so complete as to be practically independ- ent of the United Kingdom and the rest of the Empire in the administration of its own affairs, does it therefore follow that it has no imperial duty or responsibility at all? Suppose even that the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the other parts of the British Empire are held to- gether only in the loose chaotic way it is sometimes represented, is it the only inference that therefore it has ceased to be? Surely the true inference would be: if through the short-sighted views of imperial statesmen in granting complete autonomy to various portions of the Empire they lost sight of the imperial obligations of these portions, then the sooner the mistake is remedied and all the parts of the Empire are organized at least for defence, the better for all concerned.
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It is sometimes said that Canada has come to the parting of the ways, and the question of the day is: shall Canada go her own way or join the Empire? There is no such question in reality. The fates long ago gave their decision. Canada is not without, but within the Empire, of which it forms an integral and ever more important part. And, just as recently, the whole force of the Empire was employed to prevent its being split in two in South Africa, so it would be here. No imperial people, and least of all the English people, would stand idly by and see their great imperial structure destroyed, until the last ship had been sunk in the sea and the last man had perished on the field. No. It is not an open question whether Canada shall be without or within the imperial system. And only evil can come of such mischievous jtalk.
2. It is sometimes urged that a naval policy on the lines I have suggested would endanger the autonomy of the self-gov- erning dominions. But these dominions after all are not sovereign states. Moreover far too much has recently been heard about autonomy and rights, and far too little about duties and responsi- bilities. At this time of the day all this talk about autonomy is rather tiresome and its would-be champions are fighting men of straw. The principle of local autonomy has once for all been accepted and no serious statesman any longer questions it. There is, however, an evil spirit abroad throughout the world, the spirit of extreme individualism which leads straight to an- archy. "I'll do just as I please; own no duties but such as I choose; look merely to my own selfish interests of the moment, or at most those of the class to which I belong; what do I care for society, or the state, or the Empire?" That is the expression of a spirit which, if not sternly repressed, means social chaos. "The modern state," it has been said, "must seek to combine the unity of the ancient republic with an acknowledgment of the individual rights and personal freedom of the individual. It must not be an extended family or socialistic community in which the individual is lost; nor on the other hand, a mere ' social contract' of individuals who have no vital relations to each other — no relations which are not produced by their own will. Like a family, it must be based on nature, on a community of race and language; and it must rest on relations that are, and are acknowledged to be, independent of all the mere caprice of indi-
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viduals." For individual substitute state, and precisely the same is true of the relation between the various members of the Empire and the larger whole to which they all belong.
Canada is either a part of the British Empire or it is not; it must be regarded either as a member of a larger whole, or in- dependent as a small third or fourth rate state of no political account whatever in the world. If the former — if for weal or woe its fortune is inextricably bound up in that of the British Empire, then it must clearly recognize the duty and responsibility of its position. It can no longer with any sense of self-respect stand idly looking on in the enjoyment of selfish ease and prosperity while the fair share of the burden of its own defence and that of the Empire as a whole which should fall upon its shoulders, is laid upon those of its fellow-citizens elsewhere who may for a time be willing, but are not at least any more able to bear it. And it is the very height of absurdity to say that recognition of a duty so obvious can in any way involve an infringement of its freedom to manage its own local affairs in any way it pleases.
On the other hand, however, there is a very serious danger to the autonomy of which so much is heard. That system of gov- ernment under which Canadians are among the freest peoples in the world, is based absolutely — let there be no mistake on this point — upon the fortunes of the British Empire as a whole and the maintenance of the imperial navy supreme upon the seas. Without such protection and support, as Lord Grey recently pointed out, our boasted autonomy would not last a day.
3. But again we are told: Canada can have no share in any scheme of imperial defence until Canadians are admitted to a share in the direction of imperial policy.
There is some force in this objection, and in the end the claim it makes must be allowed. Meanwhile, however, it is a kind of see-saw argument, along the lines of which no progress is possible. It is more academic than practical; it stands self-condemned be- cause it offers no help to the solution of the serious difficulty of the moment. We cannot contribute money or ships, it urges, for we are not represented in the direction of imperial affairs. You can have no share in this direction of affairs, it is answered, for you do nothing for imperial defence. And so, on it goes with no practical result at all. In the circumstances too, it is not very dignified. It does look rather selfish; it does seem
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Canada and Imperial Defence, the Duty of the Hour
very like the seeking for a pretext to enable us to shirk a plain duty. Surely it would be much more in keeping with our own self-respect and dignity if a different attitude were taken. Let Canadians shoulder their fair share of the burden of imperial defence, not in fear and trembling, and anxiety to do as little as possible, but with enthusiasm. Then their claim to have a share in the direction of imperial policy will seem so just that to ignore it will be quite impossible.
Moreover, an important step in this direction has been already taken by the last Imperial Conference, which must soon be recog- nized as the most important institution of the British Empire. The Imperial Conference is composed of members appointed by no logical system of representation. And yet, consisting of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Prime Ministers of all the self-governing colonies and dominions, it is perhaps the most representative council of the Empire that could be
r evolved under any system. The pressure of events and the sheer impossibility of the present Parliament of the United Kingdom continuing much longer to be also a parliament of the Empire, are gradually bringing around the evolution of a parliament for imperial affairs (with power, I hope, to levy directly through- out the whole Empire a small tax in some form for imperial defence), in which all the various parts of the Empire will be
, fairly represented. Well, at the last meeting of the Imperial Conference the Prime Minister of England definitely pledged himself that henceforth no decisive action would be taken on any question of imperial policy without the oversea dominions and colonies being consulted. It is simply a necessity that the main lines of imperial policy should be laid down and approved by the Empire as a whole; otherwise it would be impossible to give effect to it. And on great questions involving peace or war, it would be hardly possible to conceive of any action being taken that was not supported by the great body of public opinion throughout the Empire. It must never be forgotten too that the supreme interest of the British Empire is the peace of the world. It has no aggressive designs against any other nation. And being thus mainly defensive, it should be easy to lay down the lines of a foreign policy that would secure practi- cally the endorsement of the Empire as a whole.
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F Canadian Club of Montreal 5/^97 Addresses
M6C3 1911/12
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