the ground, and the demand for labour is so great as at present to exceed the supply.

The effect of this developement on the Canadian population is already felt. Taken together with the agricultural developements, it has checked the outflow to the United States. The Canadian statesmen may be too sanguine, but it seems an undoubted fact that the exodus has for the time ceased, and even that some of the French Canadians are coming back. The same tendency is noticeable in the Far West. Until recently the leakage from Manitoba and the North-West territories into the States far exceeded the immigration from the border states. But recent figures seem to show that there is now a movement northward.* In other words, as the United States get filled up, so the population is pressed northwards towards the cold lands. The laws of the human tides are the same in America as they were in Europe in the early centuries. The warm countries are settled and civilised first, and then gradually the natural human aversion from the cold is overborne by the necessities of life, and civilisation begins to move northwards. Great Britain was, after all, one of the last of the Roman conquests, and it has been one of the latest countries of Europe to get filled up. Canada will follow the same course. She, too, will fill up late just as surely as Great Britain, and then, when she possesses a great population, she will be able to deal on equal terms with her colossal neighbour.

We may, therefore, put aside any anxiety as to the future growth of the Canadian population. A far more urgent matter for Canadian statesmen is to avoid the peril of race discord. The only hindrance to the developement of Canada lies in the possibility of a race conflict between the British and the French Canadians. We have seen how this peril was avoided by the wise spirit of conciliation that prevailed among British statesmen in the last century. But of late there have not been wanting symptoms in Canada of a new spirit of intolerance on the part of the dominant race. During the general election last autumn all sober Canadians mourned that the political issue should have taken such a strong racial colour. The British in Ontario could not resist the temptation of making party

In the 1899 Blue Book the Canadian Superintendent of Immigration reports an inflow of 12,000 immigrant settlers from the States.

capital out of the reluctance felt by the French Canadians to join in the South African war. It was not enough for the British that Sir Wilfrid Laurier had prevailed over this aversion and finally induced the majority of his French followers to vote for the Canadian contingent. A small section of the French Liberals, headed by Mr. Bourassa, had always resisted the policy, and were even joined by the French Tories in opposition to it. Another section, under Mr. Tarte, had only consented to it with reluctance, and were anxious to protest in advance against establishing a precedent for the participation of Canada in any other Imperial war-having in their minds, of course, a war with France. Sir Charles Tupper, imagining that he saw a great political advantage in identifying Laurier with his extreme wing, led the Tories of Ontario in a violent racial campaign against the French. Mr. Tarte, who is by no means a meek politician, answered in kind from Montreal and Quebec. For a few weeks Canada was treated to the miserable spectacle of a campaign of abuse between the two races, which was none the more profitable because, owing to the difference of the language, neither side understood the invective of the other. The result was, fortunately, not encouraging to those who wish to rely on race hatred for party ends. The Tory party sustained a crushing defeat, and was almost annihilated in the Province of Quebec. Most of the Conservative leaders were driven out of public life, and the Tory victory in Ontario was inadequate to balance the Liberal victory in Quebec. In that province the Liberals came back with a majority of fifty-seven to seven; in Ontario the Tories came back with fifty-three to thirtyfive. The Maritime Provinces sustained the Liberal cause, and thus Sir Wilfrid Laurier now enters upon a new career of almost supreme power. He has behind him not only nearly the whole of French Canada, but also fortunately a majority of the English-speaking members in the House.

The result is largely a personal triumph; Laurier is one of those rare men who are gifted with the power of conciliating races. He can speak equally fluently in two languages, and he understands both French and British equally well. He addresses audiences drawn from both races, and appeals with skill and sympathy to the higher nature of both. He is not an Aristides; his enemies call him flexible. He is a Free-trader, and yet he supports Protection with the apology of a tariff for revenue;' he began by hinting objections to the idea of the Canadian

contingent, and he ended by agreeing to it. But all these things are subordinate with him to the leading idea of race harmony. It is his mission to keep the races together. He is French by birth, and British by citizenship. By genius and instinct he is called to a great mission, and it has been a happy thing for the British Empire that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, supported by a sane and tolerant Governor in Lord Minto, has presided over the fortunes of Canada during the last few years.

His remarkable speech on March 13, 1901, to the Dominion Parliament comes as a timely witness to this view. It is an admirable instance of his great persuasive powers, and of the skilful way in which he unites the races by combining the ideas of patriotism and Liberalism. By his denunciations of Mr. Kruger and his assertion of the British claim he wins over Ontario, while Quebec is kept quiet by his demand for a liberal settlement in which South Africa shall be modelled on the pattern of Canada.

But Sir Wilfrid Laurier will not live for ever, and it would be idle to deny that there are grave dangers in the present political divisions of Canada. By some subtle sympathy Toronto has been infected with the very spirit of the British in Cape Town. You hear the same phrases and mark the same attitude. You hear grave men arguing against the use of the French language in law and politics, forgetting that it is part of the compromise by which originally we gained Canada. You find that British parents refuse to let their children learn French, though, thanks to the intervention of the Papal Legate, English is now largely taught in French schools. Passing from Toronto to Quebec, you find that the French are keenly conscious of this new British spirit, and are prompt to resent it. Most of the French Canadians are devoted to British rule. They have no love for modern France, and they suspect the militant Protestantism of the United States. They recognise that Great Britain has treated them justly and has been faithful to her pledges. They feel that at present they can be faithful to Great Britain without being disloyal to their own race. With this feeling, many French Canadians have even sent their sons to the war. But if they were called upon to choose between the two loyalties-the one of blood and the other of conquest, the one of race and the other of law-there can be no question that the statesmen who put such a choice before them would rouse a very ugly spirit of resistance. It is fortunate that with the destruction of the

Tory party in Canada this danger has become remote. But let there be no doubt as to the feelings of the French Canadians. They have no enthusiasm for the British cause in the South African war, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier is the only living man who could have persuaded them to participate in it. But, after all, South Africa is remote. The real danger would begin if any statesman ventured to take away their own privileges, or if a Governor came out with a domineering or suspicious spirit. At present it is the glory of our rule in Canada that it is enforced without the presence of a single British soldier beyond the few Imperial officers who command the Canadian regiments. But if we suppressed the French language or abolished the French civil law we should then have to face the necessity of keeping a large standing army in Canada. For, though the French Canadians are conscious of their own weakness, the United States stands ever ready over the border to receive Canada into her arms.

For,

But let us end on a higher and more hopeful note. on the other hand, if British rulers maintain their ancient traditions of wisdom and tolerance, there seems no limit to the future of this vast country. During this century it will probably fill up rapidly. Its population will necessarily be a mixture of races, for the overflow from Great Britain now seems unequal to the task of populating her colonies. During the last few years the Canadian Government have imported 15,000 Galicians and 8,000 Doukhobors,' and men are coming into Canada from all parts of Europe. The only country, indeed, which showed a decline was Great Britain, whose energy is for the moment either absorbed in her home trade or diverted to South Africa.* Thus the Canadian population is likely to grow up, like that of the United States, as an agglomeration of all races and creeds from the Old World. There will be all the more need of extending to her that fine spirit of race tolerance which has ever been one of the glories of the British Empire. We must put aside our possessive pride, and cease to look upon this great state as in any sense a colony or a dependency. Canada already claims to be a nation-not a colony, but a confederate, independent nation of the British Empire. That

*The immigrants of 1899 (Immigration Blue Book) into the NorthWest amounted to 41,927, thus divided: From Europe, including Great Britain, 26,364; from the United States, 9,839; Canadians from the eastern provinces, 11,724. An increase of 12,643 on 1898.

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is the claim put forward by Sir Wilfrid Laurier in a recent speech, and his voice is the voice of Canada. Canada, in fact, is an independent colony' in the same sense as Sir Redvers Buller used that phrase in his noble dialogue with General Botha at Laing's Nek in June last. The phrase is a paradox, and, perhaps it would be better to substitute Sir Wilfrid Laurier's nation' for Sir Redvers Buller's 'colony.' But we all understand its meaning. We know that it has nothing to do with that spirit of imperialism which ruined the Roman Republic. We know that it expresses a far higher and nobler spirit-the spirit of a British confederacy encircling the world, bound together by the ties of goodwill, and linked in a common devotion to the pursuit of justice and peace.