The Popular Science Monthly: Supplement

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY was established as a means of giving better expression in this country to two important tendencies of the present age: first, the greatly-increased activity of scientific inquiry, and the enlargement of the sphere of scientific thought; and, second, the growing habit of the leading minds of all countries to contribute their choicest intellectual work for periodical publication.

These tendencies have strengthened, year by year, in so marked a degree, that the limits of the MONTHLY have proved wholly inadequate to secure the object for which it was started. So many excellent things were constantly slipping by us for want of space-so many sterling articles by the ablest men in England, France, and Germany, which our readers would prize, and have often called for-that we see no way of making our work effectual and meeting the new demands but by printing supplements to our regular issues, the first of which is herewith submitted.

Ten volumes of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY have thus far been furnished, containing the largest amount of varied and valuable mental work to be found within equal limits in any periodical of any country. Its plan has been, moreover, cordially and universally approved by the most intelligent. classes of the community. We now intend to increase the scope and influence of the enterprise by the help of these supplementary issues, so as to meet the augmenting requirements of the times, and make this publication the completest reflection of the scientific and philosophic progress of the age that can be anywhere obtained. It will represent the course of contemporary thought on subjects of leading interest, preserve its most permanent elements, and form a comprehensive and independent scientific library, suited to the wants of nonscientific people.

We shall issue twelve supplements annually of the present form and size, price 25 cents each, or by subscription $3.00 a year, post-paid. Subscribers to THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY will get the two publications by remitting $7.00 a year.

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SUPPLEMENT.

THE POLITICAL DESTINY OF CANADA.

BY GOLDWIN SMITH.

GNORANCE of the future can hardly be good for any man or nation; nor can forecast of the future in the case of any man or nation well interfere with the business of the present, though the language of colonial politicians seems often to imply that it may. No Canadian farmer would take his hand from the plough, no Canadian artisan would desert the foundery or the loom, no Canadian politician would become less busy in his quest of votes, no industry of any kind would slacken, no source of wealth would cease to flow, if the rulers of Canada and the powers of Downing Street, by whom the rulers of Canada are supposed to be guided, instead of drifting on in darkness, knew for what port they were steering. For those who are actually engaged in moulding the institutions of a young country not to have formed a conception of her destiny-not to have made up their minds whether she is to remain forever a dependency, to blend again in a vast confederation with the monarchy of the mother-country, or to be united to a neighboring republic would be to renounce statesmanship. The very expenditure into which Canada is led by her position as a dependency in military and political railways, in armaments and defenses, and other things which assume the permanence of the present system, is enough to convict Canadian rulers of flagrant improvidence if the permanency of the present system is not distinctly established in their minds.

To tax forecast with revolutionary designs or tendencies is absurd. No one can be in a less revolutionary frame of mind than he who foresees a political event without having the slightest in

terest in hastening its arrival. On the other hand, mere party politicians cannot afford to see beyond the hour. Under the system of party government, forecast and freedom of speech alike belong generally to those who are not engaged in public life.

The political destiny of Canada is here considered by itself, apart from that of any other portion of the motley and widely-scattered pire." This surely is the rational course. Not to speak of India and the military dependencies, such as Malta and Gibraltar, which have absolutely nothing in common with the North American colonies (India not even the titular form of government, since its sovereign has been made an empress), who can believe that the future of Canada, of South Africa, of Australia, of the West Indies, and of Mauritius, will be the same? Who can believe that the mixed French and English population of Canada, the mixed Dutch and English population of the Cape, the negro population of Jamaica, the French and Indian population of Mauritius, the English and Chinese population of Australia, are going to run forever the same political course? Who can believe that the moulding influences will be the same in arctie continents or in tropical islands as in countries lying within the temperate zone? Among the colonies, those, perhaps, which most nearly resemble each other in political character and circumstances, are Canada and Australia; yet the elements of the population are very different-and still more different are the external relations of Australia; with no other power near her, from those of Canada, not only conterminous with the United States,

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.-SUPPLEMENT.

but interlaced with them, so that at present the road of the Governor-General of Canada, when he visits his Pacific province, lies through the territory of the American Republic. Is it possible to suppose that the slender filament which connects each of these colonies with Downing Street is the thread of a common destiny?

during a Franco-German War; for England, it may be safely said, he has no feeling whatever. It is true that he fought against the American invaders in the Revolutionary War, and again in 1812; but then he was animated by his ancient hostility to the Puritans of New England, in the factories of whose descendants he now freely seeks employment. Whether he would enthusi astically take up arms for England against the Americans at present, the British War-Office, after the experience of the two Fenian raids, can no doubt tell. With Upper Canada, the land of Scotch Presbyterians, Irish Orangemen, and ultraBritish sentiment, French Canada, during the union of the two provinces, led an uneasy life; and she accepted confederation, on terms which leave her nationality untouched, rather as a sev erance of her special wedlock with her unloved consort than as a measure of North American union. The unabated antagonism between the two races and the two religions was plainly manifested on the occasion of the conflict between the French half-breeds and the British immigrants in Manitoba, which presented a faint parallel to the conflict between the advanced posts of slavery and antislavery in Kansas on the eve of the civil war; Quebec openly sympathizing with Riel and his fellow-insurgents, while Ontario was on fire to avenge the death of Scott. Sir George Cartier might call himself an Englishman speaking French; but his calling himself so did not make him so; much less did it extend the character from a political manager, treading the path of ambition with British colleagues, to the mass of his unsophisticated compatriots. The priests hitherto have put their interests into the hands of a political leader, such as Sir George himself, in the same way in which the Irish priests used to put their interests into the hands of O'Connell; and this leader has made the best terms he could for them and for himself at Ottawa. Nor has it been difficult to make good terms, since both the

In studying Canadian politics, and in attempting to cast the political horoscope of Canada, the first thing to be remembered, though official optimism is apt to overlook it, is that Canada was a colony not of England but of France, and that between the British of Ontario and the British of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are interposed, in solid and unyielding mass, above a million of unassimilated and politically antagonistic Frenchmen. French Canada is a relic of the historical past preserved by isolation, as Siberian mammoths are preserved in ice. It is a fragment of the France before the Revolution, less the monarchy and the aristocracy; for the feeble parody of French feudalism in America ended with the abolition of the seigniories, which may be regarded as the final renunciation of feudal ideas and institutions by society in the New World. The French-Canadians are an unprogressive, religious, submissive, courteous, and, though poor, not unhappy people. They would make excellent factory-hands if Canada had a market for her manufactures; and, perhaps, it is as much due to the climate as to their lack of intelligent industry, that they have a very indifferent reputation as farmers. They are governed by the priest, with the occasional assistance of the notary; and the Roman Catholic Church may be said to be still established in the province, every Roman Catholic being bound to pay tithes and other ecclesiastical imposts, though the Protestant minority are exempt. The Church is immensely rich, and her wealth is always growing, so that the economical element which mingled with the religious causes of the Reformation may one day have its counterpart in Quebec. The French-Cana-political parties bid emulously for the Catholic dians, as we have said, retain their exclusive national character. So far from being absorbed by the British population, or Anglicized by contact with it, they have absorbed and Gallicized the fragments of British population which chance has thrown among them; and the children of High-ists, have allied themselves with the Tory party land regiments disbanded in Quebec have become thorough Frenchmen, and prefixed Jean Baptiste to their Highland names. For his own Canada the Frenchman of Quebec has something of a patriotic feeling; for France he has filial affection enough to make his heart beat violently for her

vote, and, by their interested subserviency to those who wield it, render it impossible for a Liberal Catholic party, or a Liberal party of any kind, to make head against priestly influence in Quebec. By preference the priests, as reaction

in the British provinces, and Canada has long witnessed the singular spectacle, witnessed for the first time in England at the last general election, of Roman Catholics and Orangemen march ing together to the poll. Fear of contact with an active-minded democracy, and of possible peril

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