The great question of the commercial relations between Canada and
the United States approaches a crisis. It appears that on December 13th, 1890, the Governor-General of Canada addressed to the Colonial Office a despatch proposing a joint Commission to Washington to make a treaty comprising a renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 with modifica- tions, an arrangement of all fishery questions, coasting- law questions, and river questions, and fixing the boundary between Canada and Alaska. T6 this Lord Knutsford assented, and Sir John Macdonald, in order to strengthen his hands in the negotiations by the visible support of the people, has dissolved Parliament. His opponents, headed by Mr. Langley, propose, instead of such nego- tiations, an offer of commercial fusion with the United States, and on this difference the battle will be fought out. It really involves the whole future of the North American Continent, for complete commercial fusion is sure to be followed sooner or later by political absorption. Mr. Goldwin Smith openly advises this, though he would apparently have Canada enter the Union without giving up her separateness, a proposal so impracticable that we suspect our own version of its proposer's meaning. The statesmen of Washington will never tolerate a federation within. their own.
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