impartial in cases which are strictly legal, is not in all cases absolutely impartial. The judgment in the Dred Scott case was political. The judgment in favour of the Legal Tender Act was political, since the Act, though supposed to be a financial necessity by the Government, was a clear violation of that article of the Constitution which forbids legislation subversive of the faith of contracts, inasmuch as it practically enabled a debtor to repudiate half his debt. I was present when President Lincoln, discussing with a friend an appointment to the Supreme Court, avowed that the man should not, if he could help it, be unsound on the great political question of the day. If the Federal system is to be adopted for these islands, care will have to be taken in the constitution of a tribunal which is to stand between the nation and civil war.

The Colonial Office has still a legal vote; but Canada, I repeat, enjoys to all intents and purposes full legislative independence. Fiscally, she legislates for the protection of Canadian against British goods. Her militia also is in her own hands, though the Crown still appoints a commander-in-chief, not, however, without reference to Canadian wishes. It is needless to say that she neither pays nor would consent to pay any sort of tribute. The parallel which has been drawn between Canadian self-government and the vassal and tributary Parliament proposed for Ireland is therefore totally futile. Besides, Canada is three thousand miles off, and so friendly that, invest her with what power you will, she never can be a thorn in the side of Great Britain. That any analogy should have been supposed to exist between the cases is most strange. Was Canada a part of the United Kingdom? Had she, at the time of the so-called rebellion, a full share of the representation at Westminster?

Two excellent things Canada has inherited from the mother country-a judiciary not elected, but appointed for life, and a permanent Civil Service. To any State an independent judiciary is an inestimable blessing; to a democracy it is a blessing unspeakable: and hitherto, in Canada, party has tolerably spared the appointments, though we now begin to fear that they are going into the alldevouring maw. Party nibbles at the Civil Service; but, so far, we have in great measure escaped that particular kind of corruption from which President Cleveland is so nobly and bravely struggling to rescue the American Republic.

Londir! change the

To place the political capital of the Dominion at Ottawa, a remote village subsisting on the lumber trade, was a mistake, like that which has been committed in placing the political capitals of several large States of the Union in second-rate towns. The politicians of a young and crude democracy need all the tempering, liberalising, and elevating influences which general society and a well-filled strangers' gallery can afford. The fear of mob-violence in a great city was

futile, notwithstanding the burning, by the exasperated Tories, of the Parliament House at Montreal. Equally futile was the notion that military security could be obtained by going two or three days' -march from the frontier. The enemy, if he came, would be resistless; but he will never come.

New Brunswick came at once and of her own free will into the Confederation. Nova Scotia was dragged in, her political leader having been, as everybody believed, bought, and she has been restless ever since. The little colony of Prince Edward's Island came in after the dignified delay due to its greatness. The Dominion has since incorporated the vast hunting-ground of the Hudson's Bay Company, called the North-West; and if that territory becomes peopled in proportion to its size and fertility, to it the centre of power must in time shift, supposing the Confederation endures. Confederations are not made so easily as omelets. In the operation all the centrifugal forces of rivalry, jealousy, and sectional interest, as well as the centripetal forces, are called into play. If you are going to dissolve the Union of these kingdoms to make raw materials for a Federation, take care that you do not break the eggs and fail to make your omelet after all. The people of the several States must be, as Professor Dicey well expresses it, desirous of union, but not of unity. Moreover, the group of States must be pretty well balanced in itself; at least there ought to be no State of such overweening power as to give constant cause of jealousy to the rest, and tempt them to combine against it. A Confederation of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales would probably be a standing cabal of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales against England. The territory, as I have said, may, so long as the Federal principle is observed, be indefinite in extent; but it must at least be in a ring-fence, and it must have in a reasonable degree unity and distinctness of commercial interest. The territory of the Canadian Dominion can barely be said to be in a ring-fence, still less can it be said that there is unity and distinctness of commercial interest. The Dominion is made up of four perfectly separate blocks of territory lying in a broken line along the northern edge of the habitable and cultivable continent. The maritime provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, are severed from Old Canada by a wide and irreclaimable wilderness. Old Canada is severed from the North-West by another wilderness and by a fresh-water sea four hundred miles in length; the North-West from British Columbia by a triple range of mountains. Old Canada is moreover divided between two nationalities, British and French, of the amalgamation of which there is not the slightest hope. Each of the four territories is connected commercially, not with its political partners, but with the States of the Union to the south of it. A grand effort is being made to bind the four together by political railroads; but commerce will not follow merely political lines, and the Intercolonial Railroad,

which cost forty millions of dollars, hardly takes up a passenger or a bale of freight over the greater part of its long course. There are even doubts whether it will not some day be abandoned.

The disjointed and heterogeneous character of the elements of which the Dominion is made up, while it renders the continued existence of Confederation itself precarious, has had the curious effect of producing an apparent stability of government, which it would be a mistake to set down to the credit of party. The parties not only are destitute of any basis in the shape of dividing principles, but they have never really extended beyond the two provinces of Canada which are their native seat. The government has been really personal, almost as personal as that of Bismarck. One man has held power with little interruption for forty years by his skill, ever increasing with practice, in holding together miscellaneous interests of all kinds, provincial, sectional, and personal, and in forming them into a motley basis for his government. He has no doubt made his address go as far as it would, and it has gone a long way; but he has also been compelled to have recourse to corruption in all its protean forms and in all its varied applications, though his own hands are believed by all to have remained clean. Probably no fisher of votes ever had a stranger medley of fishes in his net. Roman Catholics and Orangemen go to the poll for him together. An effective opposition to him cannot be formed simply because there is nothing for it to be formed upon. He stands not upon principle, but upon management. In management he has no rival, and counter principle there can be none. It is needless to say that the system is demoralising as well as expensive. Its existence depends on the life of a man past seventy, after whom there is a fair prospect of political chaos.

In the governments and legislatures of Ontario and Quebec the Dominion parties prevail; though in Quebec, for reasons already mentioned, the dominant party is Conservative, or, as it might more truly be called, Macdonaldite, while in Ontario the Liberal or AntiMacdonaldite party has the upper hand. In the other local legislatures local interests mainly prevail.

At the outset there was what might be roughly called a freehold suffrage, reasonable and safe enough. But in Canada, as in England, demagogues dish each other by extensions of the franchise, and extend it blindly, not revising the Constitution to see that its Conservative portions will be strong enough to bear the additional strain. It has come at last to giving votes to the Red Indians, as though selfgovernment were a blessing to a savage. The question is no trifling one. The agricultural freeholders are Conservative, especially on the subject of property. The mechanics are beginning to be infected with communism, which, though mostly imported, not native, is, as you see, already breeding trouble, and seems likely to breed more.

In the minds of the British statesmen who promoted Confedera

tion it was probably a step towards independence. In fact, if it was not a step towards independence, where was the use of it? The Colonies were already united under the Empire, and might at any time have combined their forces for mutual defence. Freedom of internal intercourse, the other great object of Confederation, was also secured, and any questions arising from time to time might have been settled by delegation and conference. It would be difficult, I am afraid, clearly to show that the provinces had actually gained anything by the operation, except a vast development of faction, demagogism, corruption, expenditure, and debt.

We have had since Confederation some political incidents illustrative of the working of the system. The Pacific Railway scandal fatally illustrated the character of the expedients to which party government, resting on no principle, is reduced for support. The enormity of the scandal awakened for a moment the moral sense of the country, and the Government fell. The same affair illustrated the constitutional position of the governor-general; for Lord Dufferin felt himself bound to take the advice of his Ministers regarding their own trial for corruption, prorogued Parliament at their instance, and allowed them to transfer the inquiry from the House of Commons, which was already seised of it, to a Royal Commission of their own appointment. Lord Lorne subsequently, after a faint struggle, consented to the removal of a lieutenant-governor, his own representative, for no assignable offence, merely to gratify party vengeance, which the lieutenant-governor had provoked by the dismissal of a provincial Ministry connected with the party dominant at Ottawa. When it has come to this, one is inclined to ask whether a personal representation of monarchy is of any use at all, and whether a stamp to be affixed to public documents would not do as well. The fiction, as has been already said, is not only futile but mischievous; it masks the necessity, which is most urgent, of real Conservative safeguards and of substantial securities for the stability of government.

Illustrative of the legislative independence of Canada is the adoption of the new fiscal system called the National Policy, which is now avowedly protective against British as well as American goods, and which takes Canada definitively out of the commercial unity of the Empire. There has been no remonstrance on the part of the Home Government, and the author of the measure has since received the Grand Cross of the Bath. There is now a perceptible gravitation towards commercial union with the United States, which would allow the commercial life of the continent to circulate freely through the veins of Canada, and would at once enhance the value of all Canadian property. There are some who think that commercial union would necessarily bring political union in its train. For my part, I can see no such necessity. Rather, I think, the removal of

the Customs line, and the enjoyment of freedom of trade with the rest of the continent, would tend to make Canadians contented with the political system as it is. A nationality must, at all events, be weak if it depends on a Customs line. There can be no doubt that, as it is, the action of economical forces, which draw Canada towards the great mass of English-speaking population on her continent, is strong. It cannot be too often repeated that to speak of the colonies and their destinies in the gross is most fallacious. Australia is in an ocean by herself. Canada is a part of a continent inhabited by people of the same race and language; and a young Canadian thinks no more of going to push his fortunes at New York or Chicago than a Scotch or Yorkshire youth thinks of going to push his fortunes in London. The accuracy of the statistics of Canadian emigration into the United States is a constant subject of dispute; but it is certain that New York and Chicago are full of Canadians, and that there is also a considerable emigration of Canadian farmers to Dakota and other western States.

Not only has Canada asserted her complete fiscal independence by the adoption of the National Policy, but she has begun practically to claim the privilege of making her own commercial treaties, through the High Commissioner who acts as her ambassador, though ostensibly under the authority of the British Foreign Office. Negotiations have been opened with France and Spain, while overtures for the renewal of reciprocity are made from time to time to the United States.

The thread of political connection is wearing thin. This England sees, and the consequence is a recoil which has produced a movement in favour of Imperial Federation. It is proposed not only to arrest the process of gradual emancipation, but to reverse it and to reabsorb the colonies into the unity of the Empire. No definite plan has been propounded; indeed, any demand for a plan is deprecated, and we are adjured to embrace the principle of the scheme and leave the details for future revelation-to which we must answer that the principle of a scheme is its object, and that it is impossible to determine whether the object is practically attainable without a working plan. There is no one in whose eyes the bond between the colonies and the mother country is more precious than it is in mine. Yet I do not hesitate to say that, so far as Canada is concerned, Imperial Federation is a dream. The Canadian people will never part with their self-government. Their tendency is entirely the other way. They have recently, as has been shown, asserted their fiscal independence, and by instituting a Supreme Court of their own, they have evinced a disposition to withdraw as much as they can of their affairs from the jurisdiction of the Privy Council. Every association, to make it reasonable and lasting, must have some practical object. The practical objects of Imperial