The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-24 00:00:00

of making money, to be taken from themby the tax-
gatherer. Annexation to such a Republic is not to
be thought of ; independence alongside of it, without
the support of the parent State, is as little to their
minds. All the cry now is to strengthen the links
that unite Canada with the mother country, and
to borrow from it the last great ornament and
cement of a permanent Governor in the shape of
King or Viceroy of the Blood Royal of England.

Whenever the Federal Government is in ill-
humour with great Britain—which is almost every
day,—or whenever it wishes to regain the fast
perishing favour of its own Irish citizens—which is
about once a week,—it instructs its organs to
threaten the seizure of Canada. The chief member
and leading spirit of the Federal Government was
not always so shortsighted. There was a time when
Mr. Seward was a prudent statesman—a time when
ha declared that on the inevitable secession of the
South from the North the Americans of the North
would offer to the world the sublime spectacle of
allowing the disruption to be peaceably effected ; a
time when he was not smitten with the madness of
war; a time when he believed in the strength of
great ideas ; a time when he would have loathed the
thought that he could become, even in the insanity
of passion, the minister and agent of a despotism,
and at that time he uttered the following memor-
able words on the subject of Canada and its rela-
tions to the Federal Government. Speaking before
the outbreak of the war, he said—
" Hitherto, in common with most of my country-
men, as I suppose, I have thoughAtmCsarniacad, a merea,or,to
speak more accurately, British
strip lying north of the United States, easily de-
tachable from the parent State, but incapable of sus-
taining itself, and therefore ultimately, nay right
soon, to be taken on by the Federal Union, without
materially changing or affecting its own condition or
development. I have dropped the opinion as a
Tuitional conceit. I see in British North America,
stvetching as it does across the continent, from the
shores of Labrador and Newfoundland to the
Pacific; and occupying a considerable belt of the
Tempera:o Zone, traversed equally with the
United StiOes by.the Lakes, and enjoying the
magnificent shores of the St. Lawrence, with its
thousands of islaeds in the river and gulf, a region
grand enough for ti seat of a great Empire. In its
wheat fields in the Wee, its broad ranges of the chase
at the Nortb, its inexhaustible lumber lands, the
most extensive now remain: 0g on the globe, its in-
valuable fisheries and its yet undisturbed mineral
deposits, I see the elements of wealth. I find its in-
habitants vigorous, hardy, energetic, perfected by
the Protestant religion and British constitutional
liberty. I find them jealous of the United States
and of Great Britain, as they ought to be; and
therefore when I look at their resources I know they
cannot be conquered by the former nor permanently
held by the latter. They will be independent, As
they are already self-maintaining. Having hap-
pily escaped the curse of slavery, they will never
submit themselves to the domination of slaveholders,
which prevails in and determines the character of
the United States. They will be a Russia behind
the United States, which to them will be France
and England. But they will be a Russia civilised
and Protestant, and that will be a very different
Russia from that which fills all Southern Europe
with terror."

Since Mr. Seward thus spoke Canadian jealousy
of Great Britain has diminished, while Canadian
jealousy of the United States has largely increased.
At the same time, the desire for independence has
all but died out. If he and his Government should
be so wicked and so unwise as to seek occasion of
quarrel with Great Britain, and attempt the inva-
sion or occupation of Canada, they will find that its
" vigorous, hardy, and energetic people," who count
about as many millions as the Americans of the era
of Washington, will render such an account of the
invaders as will duplicate the experiences of the
present war, and prove how impossible is the subju-
gfation of a nation that is determined to be free. The
Canadians have up to this time been somewhat luke-
warm on the subject of their defences, but the
apathy appears to have been the result of incre-
dulity. They have not believed in the danger,
and have consequently taken no means to avert
it. But at the first summons to arms, at the
first unmistakable symptom that war is upon
them, there is no reason to doubt that for every
20,000 men tat Great Britain shall send them the
Canadians will raise 100,000 to fight for their free-
dom and the maintenance of their connection with
the mother country. Whether in such a contingency
the Government at Washington attempted to seize
Quebec or Halifax, or to march an army of occupa-
tion to Montreal, the Canadians, backed by the
power of Great Britain, would be far more likely
to annex to their territory the State of Maine than
to be annexed or conquered by the Americans.
Such, at least, is the present feeling and convic-
tion of the great majority of the Canadian people
whether of British or French extraction. The
Canadian Britons have as little liking for the
"Yankees" as that entertained by the people of
South Carolina, which is the most emphatic term of
contempt which the French Canadian can use
towards an American is conveyed in the word
" Bostonais"—their synonym for all that is base and
unworthy.
The great favour with which the idea of the colo-
nisation of the arable lands of the Hudson's Bay
Company—the creation of a line of colonies from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, all on British territory, and
their union under one of the sons of Queen Victoria,
of Viceroy, King, or Emperor, has been everywhere
creceiveddahaa, in British America, and more especially in
proves, if it prove nothing else, that
the people have high awicipations of • the
future
destiny of that magnificent region. It
also proves how little either now or hereafter
they have, or are likely to have, in com-
mon
later w isthha thell
or F
hd
ae I
ll n
ett. mperreiscearnvse,
twh he
iert hlei
br e trht
ieesse,
Their dream of the future is that which Mr. Seward
s •
has depicted—an empire stretching from ocean to
ocean, with railway and telegraphic communication
from Halifax to Vancouver, tree from the contagion,
the guilt, and the embarrassment of slavery, in the
enjoyment of a climate better adapted, with its
bracing cold, to the lull development of the physical
and intellectual energies of the Anglo-Saxon, the
Anglo- Celtic, and the Anglo-Scandinavian races
than the warmer regions of New York and Penn-
sylvania; but without that independence of the
mother country, which Mr. Seward imagined to be
alike their wish and their destiny. There are, no
dou at, many and formidable difficulties in the way of
the union of these provinces ; bat that the influence
of the civil war has been to de-Americanize their
sentiments and their aspirations, and to draw them
more closely than ever into politicimpossibleal
ands
nocioati
relationship with Great Britain, it
to believe. For the first time in their history the
Canadians have awakened to the conviction that
the Federal Republic—or despotism, whichever
events may make it—will not and cannot be their
attack
friend, and if they would, in case of an ,
secure the material aid of the mother country
to the extent of the last man and the last
shilling they must show that they value the con-
nexion sufficiently to defend themselves by a
general muster of their whole able-bodied male
Population to resist invasion. There are many
persons in England who think that colonies are
at source of weakness rather than of strength to
the parent State, and who would be only too glad
if Canada would set up for herself, or join the
Federal Union ; but while Canada remains of the
contrary opinion,O
prove herfpaiitnhiobnY haenrd w osrtkr sa,i ntshereeviesrylittnleerve to
proba-
bility, in view of the contingencies of the American
Civil War, both in the
either the North and in the south, that
People
er the Government of Great
Britain will shut their eyes to the future of British
as
healthfulose
t regions a
desire for building up in those
kindred Empire, that may
stand towards
Brazil
Great Britain in the relation in
which
to Portugal. The " balance of power,' standslonger
s
no
confined to the Old World ; it has extended
itself
to the New, and the Federal Union, rendered War-
like by its misfortunes, and aggressive by its desire
to retrieve them, will need a strong Power to the
north of it—a Russia, if Mr. Seward prefers the
phrase—to compel it to keep the peace. Its in.
veterate purpose is to cripple England, to whom it