Mr. Joseph Howe, a Cabinet Minister in Canada, has been
delivering (February 27) a " strong " lecture to the Young Men's Christian Association of Ottawa on the con- duct of the mother country. He declared that the Dominion, with only four millions of people in it, had to govern half a continent and face a people of forty millions ; that it could not tolerate a laggard or a coward ; that in any war with the Union it would be five times as completely overborne as- France was by Germany ; that a new policy had been developed at home, and Great Britain. wasto retain her troops and surround herself with ironclads, and the Britons across the Atlantic were to be abandoned. On the eve of most serious negotiations Canada had been stripped of every soldier, and the thirty millions were "to hoard their rascal counters in two small islands," and let the Empire go. Mr. Howe is not the most trustworthy of politicians, but he always tells his audiences what they like to hear, and his speech is useful as showing what is thought in the Colonies of our centripetal policy. It is considered, as our foreign policy is con- sidered on the Continent,—purely selfish.
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