CANADA AND THE EMPIRE.
IN the current number of the Westminster Review there is an article on " Canada and her Relations to the Empire," by Colonel George T. Denison, of Toronto, which deserves to be read with much care and sympathy. Any- thing written by Colonel Denison on such a subject would merit close attention. He is the representative of one of the most distinguished Canadian families. He is, we believe, Commandant of a corps commonly known as the Governor-General's Body-guard, which was originally raised by one of his forefathers to aid in repelling the American invasion in 1812, and took a very honour- able part in the exploits with which the name of Sir Isaac Brock, " the hero of Upper Canada," is so closely associated. This corps, we understand, has always been commanded by a Denison, and was engaged under such leadership in meeting the Fenian raids in 1866, and also doubtless in putting down the so-called rebellion of 1837, which was suppressed entirely by loyal Upper Canada militia. In fact, Colonel Denison is able to write as one of that great body of the Canadian people whose ancestors, to the number of one hundred thousand, left their homes and all their possessions in the revolted Colonies rather than join in rebellion against the British Crown, and who in every generation since have risked, or been ready to risk, their lives on behalf of British interests on the American Continent. There are few, indeed, among English, Scotch, or Irish families at home who can show such a record of dangers cheerfully faced for the British flag, within the past hundred and twenty years, as the descendants of the United Empire Loyalists, and there are very few among those descendants whose claim to an attentive hearing stands higher than that of the Com- mandant of the Governor-General's Body-guard. What, then, is the purport of his message to the British public ? It is that people in this country are far from being fully alive to the evidences which Canadians have repeatedly given of the intensity and earnestness of their loyalty to the British Crown ; that they have often shown themselves, or allowed the British Government to appear, much more anxious to conciliate American feeling than to protect the interests of their own flesh and blood in the great Dominion over which the British flag still flies ; and that they are only too likely to be led astray by unjust and prejudiced criticism of Canadian aims, institu- tions, and resources, such as from time to time appear in the Press on this side of the Atlantic. As to the past, Colonel Denison, we are afraid, has only too good a case. It can hardly be denied that in regard to the Maine boundary question, for example, the Ashburton treaty made a very bad, and a very needlessly bad, bargain from the Canadian point of view, so that the State of Maine, as any one may see, " cuts up into Canadian territory like a dog's tooth." It is true again that although under the Washington treaty England agreed to pay what might be fixed by arbitrators, and did pay the immense sum of 15,000,000 dollars for losses supposed to have been suffered by American citizens through the depredations of the Alabama,' no compensation was secured by Canada for the heavy losses which she suffered from the Fenian raids, although it could hardly be disputed that the Government of the United States had neglected its duty in failing to prevent those filibustering expeditions not less than her Majesty's Government had neglected its duty in allowing the ' Alabama' to escape from British waters. We are glad, however, to see that Colonel Denison appears satisfied with the firmness and considera- tion for Canadian rights displayed by the British Govern- ment in regard to the Behring Sea question, and we may confidently assure him that among Britons of all parties at home, there is no division of opinion or feeling as to the duty of standing firmly by our Canadian brethren in vindication of their just rights, should they be assailed from any quarter. If there has seemed to be any cool- ness in the past, it arose from ignorance which has passed away, and there is now not only a deep and general, but a growing sentiment of community of interest and of intimate family association with our fellow-countrymen across the Atlantic.
That being so, we venture to hope that Colonel Denison and the people of Canada generally, will cease to attach importance from time to time to the more or less minimising reflections upon the value of Canadian loyalty from the pen of Mr. Goldwin Smith in English magazines. Mr. Smith has an admirable style, and his contributions on Transatlantic or Cisatlantic politics are very generally read with pleasure, for their style, by the subscribers to several of our principal reviews and journals. But no one here, we imagine, takes seriously Mr. Goldwin Smith's views upon the desirableness of what he calls Continental Union, or admires or approves of the depreciatory tone which he adopts either with reference to the great North-Western Territory of the Dominion, or to the Imperial value of the Canadian Pacific Railway, or, least of all, with reference to a recent offer of the Canadian High Commissioner in London, on behalf of the Dominion Government, to place the Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry at the service of the home Government in case of war. We understand the irritation which these reflections have caused in Canada, and we share it; but that very fact should prevent the Canadians from being really troubled on the subject. Mr. Smith seems to think, or suggest, that we should abandon Canada if the United States invaded it. We are hardly even annoyed by that suggestion, because we know that it is so absurdly remote from the facts or probabilities. Our Canadian fellow-countrymen must agree with us not to be distressed by imputations which they and we alike know to be groundless. As to anti-English feeling in the United States, we hope and think that Colonel Denison takes an exaggerated view of it ; and in any case we believe that a frank and firm Imperial policy is the best way of bringing about that true friendship between the great Republic and the British Empire which is so much to be desired in the best interests of mankind.
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