Shorter Notices
EVER since the publication of his fascinating study, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, discriminating people have real- ised .that in Donald Creighton the Univer- sity of Toronto has one of the half-dozen best historians now writing anywhere in the English-speaking world. The first volume of his long-awaited biography of John A. Macdonald will confirm this high opinion. The writer of nineteenth-century political biography has many examples of high excellence to compete with, both in Britain and in the United States. The problem of not letting the times dominate the life and, conversely, of not making the subject of the biography*llc too large is one which is never easy to solve. In this case there has been the further difficulty of incorporating into the narrative a great mass of newmaterial from British and Canadian archives without overloading the story from the point of view of the general reader. Professor Creighton has triumphantly survived both these tests of his skill, and for the first time, perhaps, we get out of the tangled threads of mid-nineteenth-century Canadian politics a clear view of how the national identity of Can- ada was saved from being engulfed by United States' imperialism, and how confederation, the solution to Canada's internal problems, was pushed through by a rare combination of skill and patience. At a time when con- structive efforts within the Empire are at a discount, this work should prove an inspira- tion to those who have not abandoned its ideals, and may at least create in England a new interest in the history of the greatest of
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