date at which they may come into operation, and further until the expiration of two years after either of the Parties shall have given to the other notice of its desire to terminate the same: which either may give at the end of the said ten years or at any time afterward [Art. XXXIII.].

Temporary as these provisions are, or at least terminable at the will of either Party, they are equitable in themselves, and advantageous both to the United States and the Canadian Dominion; and, like the permanent provisions of the Treaty explained in this chapter, they tend to draw the two countries closer and closer together.

The germ of the Treaty of Washington, it is to be remembered, was the suggestion of the British Government through Sir John Rose, a former Canadian Minister, whose proposal related only to pending questions affecting the British possessions in North America, not Great Britain herself.

What these questions were we partly understand by the stipulations of the Treaty, the whole of which, except those growing out of incidents of the late Civil War, are of interest to Canada, including the maritime Provinces, primarily if not exclusively, although requiring to be treated in the name of Great Britain.

To the arrangements actually made, Canada would have preferred, of course, revival of the Elgin-Marcy Reciprocity Treaty, involving the admission into each country, free of duty, of numerous articles, being the growth and produce of the British Colonies or of the United States. It was the desire of Canada to have

provision made for alleged claims on account of the acts of the Fenians. But the United States would not listen to either of these propositions: so that the Dominion had opportunity to allege that she was sacrificed to the Metropolis, and thus to obtain, by way of compensation, the guaranty on the part of the Imperial Government of a large loan for the construction of the proposed trans-continental railway from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean.

In some respects, the arrangements we have been considering resemble those of the Reciprocity Treaty; but they are much more comprehensive, and they are better in other respects.

We have placed the question of the fisheries on an independent footing. If the American fisheries are of inferior value to the British,--which we do not concede, then we are to pay the difference. But the fishery question is no more to be employed by the Dominion of Canada, as it has been heretofore, either as a menace or as a lure, in the hope of thus inducing the United States to revive the Reciprocity Treaty.

Apart from other new provisions in the Treaty of Washington of less moment, there is the all-important one, stipulating for reciprocal right of commercial transit for subjects of Great Britain through the United States, and for citizens of the United States through the Dominion: in view of which Sir John Macdonald has no cause to regret his participation in the negotiation of the Treaty.

Sir Stafford Northcote, in the late debate on the Queen's speech, repels with force and truth the sug

gestion of Lord Bury that the Treaty of Washington is unjust to Canada. He shows, on the contrary, that the Treaty is beneficial and acceptable to the Dominion, specifying particulars, and citing the approbatory votes of the legislative assemblies of the Canadian and maritime Provinces.

But the United States will never make another treaty of reciprocal free importation, without including manufactures and various other objects of the production of the United States not comprehended in the schedule of the Elgin-Marcy Treaty. In fine, Canada must expect nothing of this nature short of a true zollverein involving serious modifications of the commercial relations of Canada to Great Britain.

RELATION OF THE BRITISH PROVINCES TO THE UNITED

STATES.

The Dominion of Canada is one of those "Possessions," as they are entitled, of Great Britain in America, which, like Jamaica and other West India Islands, have ceased to be of any economic value to her save as markets, which in that respect would be of almost as much value to her in a state of independence, -which she has invited and encouraged to assume the forms of semi-independent parliamentary government, which, on the whole, are at all times a charge to her rather than a profit, even in time of peace, which would be a burden and a source of embarrassment rather than a force in time of war, and which, therefore, she has come to regard, not with complete carelessness perhaps, but with sentiments of kindli

ness and good-will, rather than of the jealous tenaciousness of sovereign power. When the Dominion shall express desire to put on the dignity of a sovereign State, she will not encounter any obstacles on the part of the Metropolis.

In regard to the Dominion of Canada, as to the Colonies of Australasia, the power of the Metropolis appears there chiefly in the person of the Governor, and in the occasional annulment of laws of the local legislatures deemed incompatible with those of the Empire. On the other hand, the Colonies, which have necessary relations of their own with neighboring Governments, as in the case of Canada relatively to the United States, can not treat thereon themselves, as their interests require they should, but must act through the intervention of the Metropolis, which, in this respect, may have other interests of its own superior and perhaps injurious to those of the Colonies.

Meanwhile the Dominion has now to provide for the cost of her own military defense, and that, not against any enemies of her own, but against possible enemies of the Mother Country. The complications of European or of Asiatic politics may thus envelop the Dominion in disaster, for causes wholly foreign to her, as much so as if she were a sovereign State. In such an emergency, the Dominion would be tempted to assume an attitude of neutrality, if not of independence.

All these considerations show how slender is the tie which attaches the Dominion to Great Britain.

The entire history of all European Colonies in America proves that the sentiment of nationality, that is, of attachment to the Mother Country, is very weak, and readily yields place to other sentiments of ambition, interest, or passion, so as to produce feelings of hostility between the inhabitants of the Metropolis and those of the Colonies more intense than such as exist between either of them and the inhabitants of other countries. This fact is particularly remarkable in the incidents of revolution in Spanish America, example of which we have now before the eyes in the insurrection which rages in Cuba. But the same fact appears distinctly in the past history of British America. And there is no reason to suppose that the sentiment of mere loyalty, that is, political attachment to the Mother Country, is any more strong at present in the Dominion of Canada than it formerly was in the British Colonies now constituting the United States.

M. H. Blerzy, in a very instructive essay on the Colonies of the British Empire, discussing the question whether the English beyond sea are likely to remain attached to England by recollections of family or of country, observes with great truth that "the very aptitude for colonization of which the English are so proud could not exist without implying a certain insouciance of family on their part and disdain of their native country."

How true is this remark! It is illustrated by contrasting the devoted attachment of the French to France, who in our day send so few colonists to