NORTH AMERICAN POLITICS ANT) THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY. T HE Englishman
who can find time and energy to divert his gaze from home topics, will be amply rewarded. by the variety and piquancy of the co- temporary problems which are on their road towards solution in the various quarters of our globe. While ancient Asia slumbers under the sceptres of Empires Chinese, Ottoman, Russian, and English, a dormant volcano, which some time may inundate with its countress streams of life Australasia and America as well as Europe ; while secret Africa, from the mysterious Soudan to Cape Agulhas, reveals its inmost recesses to the curiosity and enterprise of hunters and. traders, and confirms the veracity of earliest history,—the peoples who inhabit the Continent of North America seem on the very threshold of new conquests and. greatness. For, within a few brief years the successful completion of a great commercial enterprise has not only secured a route for commerce across the Dominion of Canada, from the shores of Nova Scotia to those of British Columbia, but has made plain to all men that there are possibilities in the imminent future which will go far to falsify many hitherto seemingly sound political judgments. And. the present moment, when the Tariff Bill of Mr. McKinley is an accomplished fact, is a very fitting moment in which to insist on the nature and. importance of the crisis.
Until a quite recent period, the common opinion about Canada—an opinion, it may be remarked, largely influenced. by the interested motives of the inhabitants of the United States—has been of an adverse and depreciatory sort. Englishmen of the older generation have scarcely yet learnt to think of the Dominion as other than it was at the time of the ' Trent' incident,—a congeries of ill-knit provinces, without any effective organisation ; rich enough in forests and. pastures, a paradise of sport, but devoid of the mineral wealth and. the luxuriant prosperity which characterise its mighty neighbour. Even when the Dominion ceased to mean the maritime provinces with Quebec and Ontario ; even when the Red River Expedition had. acquainted the world which reads newspapers with the shadowy name of Manitoba ; even when the locomotive actually traversed. the leagues of prairie which lie beyond Winnipeg, had climbed the Rockies and. Selkirks, and steamed along the peaceful reaches of Vancouver Harbour, —even then English people failed to grasp what it all meant. For the lessons of the past are hard to unlearn,—the politician clings to his knowledge that Quebec is the happy hunting-ground of the Jesuit; that the Fenians have had their eye on Canada ; and that Mr. Goldwin Smith has sat for years at Toronto, an insistent Jonah foretelling quarterly the coming day of annexation : while the financier has a keen remembrance of the Dominion's monetary straits, and its comparative barrenness as a field for investments. The dazzling advance, moreover, of the United States since the close of the War of Secession has further prevented a true judgment of Canada's real progress.
But whatever may have been the slowness of the English to see the significance of the new development, it is very certain that neither New York nor San Francisco were as slow. While Canada remained a comparatively obscure country, engaged in the lumber trade, competing in the grain market with difficulty against the farmers of Iowa or Wisconsin or Dakota, or eking out its income with its furs and its fisheries, a vast territory starved for want of capital, and dependent on the States as its natural market, so long did. the destiny of the Dominion lie in the hands of the politicians at Washington. In such circum- stances, no angry shot seemed needful to be fired, no border militiaman need expect to risk his life in the transfer of the Star-Spangled Banner from the American to the Canadian side of the Horse-Shoe Fall at Niagara. By a peaceful but oppressive manceuvre, by the unbearable pressure of a hostile tariff, Quebec and Montreal could be coerced into surrender, and the Canadians driven to solicit annexation. That the motives and policy existed, seems obvious; that it may yet succeed, is not without the bounds of possibility ; that it has been rendered at once more difficult and more desirable by the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is certain. The years which have elapsed since the close of the great Secession struggle have been, as all men know, years of miraculous growth and prosperity in the regions south of the imaginary line which severs the United States from the _Dominion of Canada. The tide of population and prosperity is still ever mounting higher and higher. If the young States of Minnesota and Dakota are beginning to rival, with their vast cities and. industries, the prodigies of elder States, the hitherto unworked mineral wealth of the South threatens to cast into the shade the cliffs and mountains of iron which line the shores of Lake Superior, or the more precious veins of metal in Nevada and California. The buzz of a ceaseless enterprise spreads through the Pacific States, and the outlay of the dollars of San Francisco and Portland is raising on the shores of Puget Sound cities and towns already linked to Chicago and. New York by stupendous systems of railways. In the all-engrossing task of self-development, the tireless energies of the Yankee States have hitherto been mainly engrossed. Yet as their field for future enterprise daily grows occupied, there are many who cast eager eyes across the artificial frontier, and yearn to tear aside the handiwork of diplomacy. The temptation is the greater, since on the other side of the Dominion bounds, the fevered energy of the United States gives way to a scantier and more leisurely progress : the shower of gold which falls from the hoards of London as well as New York on the prosperous Republic dwindles to an exiguous shower on the less favoured soil of our great Im- perial Colony. Along thousands of miles from New Westminster to the shores of Superior, the mountains and cornfields of Washington, Montana, Dakota, and Minnesota border on the limitless ranges and prairies of the Dominion. The incitement to covet is immense, for the comparatively unknown mines of British Columbia, and its noble harbours and fisheries, as well as the great central plains of Assiniboia and Saskatchewan, are being keenly surveyed by the keenest people of these latter days. Hence the dislike and opposition which have existed all through in the United States to the enterprise and success of the Canadian Pacific Railway ; and hence the great im- portance of its task. In five short -years, the factors of the problem have been profoundly modified. The men of the Dominion and of the "Old. Country" have realised once and for all that they possess an enormous estate, not made up of pathless desert, of barren prairies, of ice-bound rivers, and profitless mountains. Day by day they are learning that there lie in the enormous recesses of the Rocky Mountains, or among the exquisite and wooded flanks of the Selkirk and coast ranges, stores of precious metals not less rich than those of more Southern regions ; that the fisheries of the rivers and fiords of the Pacific coast contain the elements of industrial prosperity; and that the cornfields of the North-West may become competitors with those of the Republic for European custom. Nor is this all. The discovery and opening-out of these vast regions involves a new life and a greater importance for the older cities of Ontario. The wants of the chain of farms which now stretches in links from Winnipeg to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, are naturally supplied from Montreal, Toronto, or Ottawa, and their produce must more and more tend thitherward for its markets. If those stately towns once feared extinction at the merciless hands of the American Protectionist, and if of old they took serious thought of the need of annexation in preference to death from inanition, the time of fear is swiftly passing. That is a fact becoming very luminous to the rulers of the United States, and there are signs written large to-day of its being a cause of disquiet at Washington, for a reason which is not far to seek.. A. system of Protection such as is practised in the United States develops sooner or later a weakness which is very difficult to meet. For after the first successes of Protec- tion are gained, after adverse tariffs have enabled the iron- masters of Pennsylvania and other native capitalists to vie at home with the manufacturers of Europe, new needs arise. There comes a time of craving for extended borders, of desire for fresh markets wherein to sell and wherein to buy,—to buy, perchance, raw material, to sell manufactured articles. In the case of countries practising Free-trade, this natural law of expansion can be easily and naturally satisfied by a larger intercourse with its neighbours,—an intercourse, however, which the American Republic has rendered difficult for itself by its own policy. No Protectionist State can eventually feel secure if its neighbours practise even a limited Free-trade. In the interests of self-preservation, the men of the United States would fain have all the Continent of America Protectionist, or united in Treaties of Reciprocity. By such a transaction they have turned the Sandwich Islands into a Yankee plantation, while freely admitting Honolulu sugar-canes into the United States. Recent events have suggested the possibility of some such dealings with Brazil, with what chance of success is not clear. Certain it is that to force Canada into a compact, to shut out for good and all the exports of Europe, to retain the purchasing control of the Canadian grain trade, to inundate the North-West with their manufactured goods, may well be conjectured to be among the leading motives of the new McKinley Tariff. "America for the Americans" is a cry which is growing shriller for the very emergency in which the Protectionists find themselves. It lies at the root of the somewhat unaccountable despatches of Secretary Blaine, of the con- test about the Behring Straits fisheries ; and it finds a naive utterance in such ingenuous orators as Senator Fry of Maine, who told his brother-Senators last July that it was the business of England "to bunk" from Halifax, Bermuda, and North America at large.
But it may be questioned if the time for a successful tariff war is not over, since Canada now knows herself to have a future, and England awakens to the fact. In the Canadian Pacific, the Dominion possesses a great outlet to the Asiatic countries, as well as to her own distant terri- tories. Harassing and costly as is the American Tariff, it is no longer a matter of life and death. If she turns her eye to England rather than the States, if she welcomes English manufactures and consults the needs of this country's markets, the Dominion may hope to emulate the successes of Chicago or Minneapolis. With the growth of the North-West, the greatness of the older cities will wax rapidly, and they must gain an importance impossible before. To ensure success, English capital should seek investments in the new provinces with a freedom which is at present wanting. If London is careless of the treasures of British Columbia or the Central Provinces, New York and San Francisco will supplant London. In the uncertainty of the answer lies some of the charm of the problem. Yet the completion of the route to Vancouver, and the rapid growth of the Canadian Pacific system, are strong evidence that Englishmen desire to keep their hold on North America. Unless the rivalries of Frenchman and English- man, of Romanist and Orangeman, provoke some luckless schism, it seems fair to hope that the forebodings of former years may be laid aside. In that direction more than any other, lies perhaps the most real menace to the unity and conservation of the Dominion of Canada ; yet it is a peril likely to be dwarfed by the vast expansion of the State. The rivalries of Quebec with Ottawa should grow less acute, when the larger affairs of the time are shared with the representatives of younger provinces. If such be the outcome, this greater harmony will certainly not be the least of the benefits wrought by the Canadian Pacific Railway. And the recent speeches of the Canadian Ministers at Halifax, strong as they are in confidence for the future, are an earnest of the early dawn of happier and more prosperous times for that great Dominion, which will look for its future greatness and commercial prosperity alike to the communities of Europe and. Asia. -
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