The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-07 00:00:00

THE SUN,

can be affected by the heat of personalities or by the
reiteration of libellous aspersions.
Among the hints thrown out by the eminent candi-
date for the suffrages of the people of Sheffield, it is
significant to find as about the most conspicuous the
one having reference to what he calls the reform of
the Reform Act. That reform, the reform of our
system of representation—a reform second only in
imminence to th• reform of our Financial Arrange-
ments--must inevitably take place in the end. In
the furtherance of that great undertaking the indus-
try, the ardour, and the capacities of Mr.
ROEBUCK will be of incalculable value. For
these, and for a multitude of similar reasons,
we are rejoiced to observe the course
adventured upon by the constituency of Sheffield, a
course honourable alike to itself and its candidate,
and by the completion of which the High Commis-
sioner of the lonian Islands will leave in his place a
worthy successor, while the Reformers of England
will have restored to themselves one of their most useful
and estimable advocates. Let the Liberal electors
proceed to the fulfilment of our expectations, in spite
of the yelps of a blood hound opposition, and they will
have counterbalanced the sectarian ingratitude of
Bath by the generous determination of Sheffield.

Canada is again restive. Whatever the Colonial
Secretary may assert to the contrary, whatever the
Prime Minister may say to corroborate his state-
ment, whatever dispatches may be received from the
Governor—the fact is glaring that there has arisen
once more a decided feeling of disaffection towards the
mother country on the part of the Canadians. And
this time the disaffection is not restricted to aminority,
or even to a majority, of the population; it has in-
fected the representative Chamber of the Canadian
Legislature. The import of this disturbance is
variously estimated. Those who happen to be gifted
with a more sanguine temperament regard the occur-
rences now taking place at Quebec and Montreal as
merely temporary ebullitions of popular excitement
to be allayed by the official sugar-plums at the dis-
posal of Lord ELGIN. Others, who are habitually
disposed to look at such matters under their darkest
aspect, already begin to foresee the renewal of the
calamities which supervened upon the evil adminis-
tration of NORTH, and to predict a second disruption
of our American dependencies as disastrous as that
which led to the establishment of the Republican
Government of the United States. Without taking
either of these extreme views, it would be ridiculous
to conceal from ourselves the conviction that the
affairs of the two Canadas have latterly assumed a
very alarming appearance.
Something decisive must be done by her MAJESTY'S
Ministers not only towards the conciliation of our
colonists among themselves, but towards the recon-
ciliation of those colonists with the supreme Govern-
ment. It is out of all question that these melancholy
embarrassments should continue to be of periodical
recurrence. The stability of the whole empire is
dependent upon the preservation of a proper feeling
throughout its constituent portions. Great Britain
signifies a vast deal more than these islands of Eng-
land, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. It indicates in
one compact title the gigantic monarchy whose con-
stitutional Sovereign is VICTORIA, and whose domi-
nions are at once insular, peninsular, and continental
—extending into the heart of Asia as far as the
Himalayas; into the depths of the Mediterranean, by
Gibraltar and Valetta, as far as Corfu ; into southern
Africa as far as the Bosjesmans ; into the forest re-
cesses of America as low down as the haunts of
the Cbippeways, and into its polar regions as high up
as the Sound of Wolstenholm. It embraces in Aus-
tralia alone a fifth continent 1,700 miles from north
to south and 2,400 miles from east to west. In its
single possession of Hindostan it numbers no less
than 100,000,000 of Asiatics as subjects. In
the east it has islands of spice and in the
west islands of sugar. On the confines of the
Arctic Circle it has acres of timber untouched by the
hatchet. Within the circumference of the Antarctic
Circle it has leagues of whale fisheries unpierced by
the harpoon. In such scattered territories the races
are not less diversified than the religions. The study
of the population of the British empire would furnish
examples of almost every tribe of the human species
to the ethnologist, and of almost every creed ever
conceived by the imagination of man to the moral
philosopher. Its subjects are composed of negroes
and white men, mulattoes and redskins, Malays and
Caucassians, Cinghalese and Mongolians. And the
aomage of these various specimens of humanity are
respectively offered to BRAHMA, to VISHNU, to
ALLAH, and to the INCARNATE WORD who, one
,housand eight hundred and fifty years back, was
crucified in the suburbs of Jerusalem. To secure
the consolidation of this stupendous empire is the first
object of the patriotism of England, and the first
aim of her statesmen. But to anticipate any-
thing beyond its gradual dismemberment would
he the very extreme of absurdity, if our
colonial administration is to perpetuate that
calamitous policy which leads to nothing but
perpetual quarrels and perpetual reconciliations. For
these bickerings are not temporary evils ; they lead
inevitably in the end to estrangement, and that es-
trangement inevitably leads to disruption. Of this
we have had sufficient experience—if only in the
foundation of an independent democracy at Washing-
con. So certain, indeed, is the consequence we have
mentioned, that we might, in the majority of cases,
go the length of hazarding a prediction, but that the
inscrutable mysteries of futurity baffle even the saga-
city of the most prophetic.
" Pruclens futuri tempiris exitum
nccte premit lltus;
Rid( tque, si mortalis ultra
Fas trepidat."
Common prudence, however, is alone necessary to
guard against the realisation of these forebodings ;
and if precautionary measures are essential in other
departments of the public service, they are more than
ever essential in that department which is presided
over by the Colonial Secretary.

Canada is no Cerberus. It is not to be conciliated
by a mere sop. Its interests and our interests mus t
be identified if we wish to preserve it for ever to
ourselves. How is this to be accomplished ? The
solution of the problem—difficult though it may
appear—is very far from being out of the reach of
discovery. Many, we know, regard it as about an
equivalent to the squaring of the circle. We look at
it other wise. The difficulty exists in the first place
in the Canadas, and the means of removing that diffi-
culty i 3 there too. There is never a bane, says the
old saw, but the antidote is within a stone's throw.
the dockleaf grows in the shadow of the stinging-
nettle. In brief—the means of reconciling Canada
to England, and of binding the colony to the mother
country inextricably, is discoverable in Canada itself,
in its riches both mineral and agricultural, in its
ports and rivers, its soil and its climate. Canada has
the material in abundance ; England has the intelli-
gence and vigour which is alone wanting to work
that material. Let England and Canada but once
see this and the result will be to their com-
mon advantage. Let England see that she
has within herself an amount of strength and
ability immeasurably beyond her own requirements—
an amount of strength and ability that as things at
present remain are literally running to waste—and
she will no longer continue indolent while rebellion
is ripening in North America. Let Canada see that
she possesses a treasure in grain, and fruit, and metal,
and timber, infinitely beyond her own use—a trea-
sure that is, in like manner, running to waste within
her boundaries—and she will no longer be disposed
to pick a suicidal quarrel with the power alone
competent to aid her in working out her develop.
went.'* And as to the method of working out that
development—listen to the remarks of one who has
studied well the resources and capabilities of the two
Canadas:—" Completeness of communication," says
Lieutenant SYNGE in his admirable pamphlet on

* Upon this point it has already been observed, by the
late gifted Charles Buller—whose untimely decease can-
not be too often or too earnestly deplored—" In your
colonies," said he, addressing himself to the House of
Commons, "in your colonies you have vast tracts of
most fertile land wanting only capital and labour to
cover them with abundant harvests; and, from want of
that capital and labour, wasting their productive ener-
gies in nourishing weeds, or, at least, in giving shelter
and sustenance to beasts. When I ask you to colonise,
what do I ask you to do but to carry the superfluity of
one part of our country to repair the deficiency of the
other; to cultivate the desert, by applying to it the means
that lie idle hare: in one simple word, to convey the
plough to the field, the workman to his work, the hungry
to his food?"—Quoted in the number of the Edinburgh
Review just published. Art. " Colonies and Coloniza•
tiers," page 529.