29 AUGUST 1874, Page 6

CANADIAN POLITICS.

THEprogress of the Canadian Dominion is so rapid and so great, that it is difficult at first sight to know what Lord Dufferin wants with a Reciprocity Treaty, or why Mr. G. Brown should be sent to Washington, cap in hand, to ask the Washing- ton Government to take off duties which press first of all upon its own people in the West. When, in 1866, the Americans, furious with the Canadians for their sympathy with the South, resolved to starve them into better behaviour, and repealed the Reciprocity Treaty, the Canadians, instead of whining over the " unfriendliness " of their great neighbour, set to work to open up their own country, federalise their political system, and discover new markets for their produce, and of course succeeded. Their trade fell in the first year of the repeal some six millions sterling, and remained till 1870 less than it had previously been. In that year, however, the lost ground was made up, and in 1873 their trade with the world was £10,000,000 greater than it had been before the repeal, while the trade with the United States rose gradually to within £400,000 of its former level. The progress is still going on, and there is every prospect that within five years more the trade of the Dominion will have doubled, and the country be entirely independent of the fiscal policy ruling within the United States. Their aggregate trade is already £47,000,000, and with the exception of Great Britain and Germany, no State, and scarcely any combination of States, is so good a customer to the Union. It seems, therefore, as if Lord Dufferin, in sending Mr. Brown to Washington to ask for a new Treaty, and to submit nonsensical calcula- tions about the balance of trade being now against the Union, was displaying a superfluity of humbleness, more especially as he knows very well that Free-trade, though most important to the material well-being of any country, will not stop war, or establish "friendliness," or secure any one of the sentimental advantages very often claimed for it. Prussia crushed the States included in the Zollverein just as energetically as if they had been armoured in prohibitive tariffs ; North and South enjoyed absolute free-trade, and sprang at one another's throats; and England is disliked by half the States which her commercial policy helps to become rich. The passions of nations are not mollified by a sound commercial system, any more than the passions of parties are by sound finance, and Yankees will de- spise Canadians, and Canixlians suspect Yankees, when grind- stones are untaxed in transit and lumber floats without a stamp. To all appearance, the Canadians have only to learn a lesson from their own federal experience, abolish all such duties on American goods as their Treasury can spare, and wait unconcernedly till Americans find out that every duty against the foreigner is a fine levied upon the native who wants the imported goods.

These, we say, are the facts of the situation as revealed in Mr. George Brown's memorandum just submitted to Mr. Fish, and taken by themselves, they do not justify the action of the Governor-General in the matter. But then there are other facts, which do not all of them appear in the Blue-book, and which must be allowed their weight, perhaps more weight than is allowed to the commercial principles. That quarrel about Cod is not over, for the Union has to pay some money, and has not paid it,—and quarrels about cod are extremely dangerous things. You cannot station a policeman with a truncheon to look after a fishing-bank in a foggy bay. You must, if you mean to protect the fish, station a cruiser, and if the captain of a cruiser sees a chance, he will let off his guns at somebody, and shots once fired, common-sense goes• out of the brains of the nation at whose ships the shots are directed. Peace on a faing-bank is too much at the mercy of men who are apt to consider peacefulness under certain provocation too dis- honourable to maintain, and who come to believe in their weary watch that a theft of fish is a crime against the majesty of the Empire. If the Canadians, therefore', by surrendering duties which, except as sources of revenue, are pure evils, can get rid of the Fishery question, so much the better, more especially as they also get rid, at the same time, of some of their own prejudices. It is in these prejudices that the justification of Reciprocity Treaties lies. Nothing, apparently, can drive commercial sense into Colonial or Republican heads. The majority of Canadians, like the majority of Americans and Australians, honestly believe that you can get more hay out of a field than there is grass in it ; that a nation can import goods without paying for them in exports ; that it is profitable to send away more property than you get back again in its equivalents. Consequently, any step towards Free-trade is liable to be retraced, and it is of the highest importance to place Free-trade under the guarantee of public faith and international law. The Legislature of either country is quite capable of doubling its tariff under a delusion, but it is not capable of breaking a Treaty without due warning, and consequently a treaty is sometimes an aid to the most convinced Free-traders. Napoleon III. never could have made Frenchmen see that to tax English alpacas was to fine themselves whenever they wanted cheap alpaca, but he could make them observe a Treaty which seemed to contain a bargain, and he did, until at last a true opinion about Free- trade began to grow up in France. The defence for the Cob- den Treaty is the defence for the Reciprocity Treaty, and the result, if it is accepted, will be the same,—increased wealth for both countries, and a diminished belief that fining his cus- tomers is the best way for a shopkeeper to grow rich.

The results of Federation in Canada have been so good, that the statesmen of the Dominion intend, according to the Times,. to draw the political bond a little closer. The maritime Provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island, with the Colony of Newfoundland—are to be fused into one, with a population of 900,000; and then, if possible, all general power is to be concentrated in the Parliament which sits at Ottaw-a. That design, though not quite in accord with English opinion, which rather likes federations outside the Kingdom, and in 1860 was as wild for State Sovereignty as if Ireland had never rebelled, is, we believe, a wise one. These little Governments are not cheap, they are very apt to become corrupt—one of them has just disappeared under serious accusations—they occasionally quarrel in a very bitter and dangerous way—hating one another, as regiments some- times do all the more bitterly because they have not the smallest reason for so doing,—and they absorb in provincial work the abilities which might benefit the nation at Urge. The first need of a State is statesmen and statesmen do not grow thick in countries where provincialism is allowed to be triumphant. No European country has produced so few great men as Switzerland ; the statesmanship of the Union tends to be over-diplomatic--the statesmanship of men who have to conciliate equals rather than of men who rule and found—and the Federation of Canada has perceptibly increased the capacity, energy, and moderation of her leading men. They have bigger things to do, they become more con- scious of responsibility, and they have to measure themselves by larger and higher standards of comparison. Good vestrymen are rarely good statesmen, more especially when, as in the case of Canada, the State has yet to be securely built, when foreign polities are very important, and when defensive organisations require to be very strict. Every step taken by the Canadians towards centralisation in politics is a step towards the forma- tion of a strong, rapidly-moving State, and therefore of that separate and effective nationality which they so greatly desire, and which they will secure all the more rapidly, if they can draw inko. one governing and deliberating Council all the political brain of the Dominion. It has not so much of it that it can afford to keep up a dozen Parliaments— and less than a dozen could not carry out the theory of Federal Government—or to limit the able men at the centre to the kind of work which naturally falls to the share of a Federal Executive. The Ottawa Parlia- ment, though far the best in the Dominion, would be all the- better for the permanent watchfulness of a nation, and this- watchfulness will be developed with every increase in its power and its responsibilities. It would be easy, of course, to push centralisation too far in so vast a country, and thus destroy local spirit ; but that is seldom the danger of men who speak English in any part of the world, and will certainly not be the danger of the Dominion while distances are so vast, popula- tion so thin, and communications so completely hopes of the- future.