Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-06-29
A PROPOSED CONQUEST.

In our opinion We are just upon the |
threshold of the most important foreign |
relations question that has been presented !
to the country since the Revolution. What |
is to be the relation between the British |
possessions on our north border and the |
United States, is the coming momentous |
topic. There is on that side of the Nation |
British territory of vast wealth Of natural
resource, rich in minerals, timber and |
fertile lands, navigable waters and all
material needs, and capable Of supporting
producing population of many millions Of
people To the full development of this
region and Its industrial populating, the
best energies of the Government Of Great
Britain are to be devoted. 1t will not,
however, contine itself to ordinary develop
ment. Naturally that would be slow
process; the commercial and state craft OF
England and the Dominion are not content
with any laggard means of growth. They
have resolved, unless all indications are
deceitful, to be aggressive as well as pro-
gressive. They propose to stimulate the
development of the Northwest by bidding
for the major part of the trade and trans
portation traffic OF the United States, and
to that end the Canadian Pacific Railway
was subsidized with gifts exceeding in the
aggregate all the grants made to all the
railroads of the Union. Theroad has been
made a Government dependency and ex-
empted from taxation and 50 fortified by
the credit, the military and the CONNER
| cial strength of Great Britain, that it has
well been styled "The English Government
on Wheels All these facts elaborated in
detail, the RECoRD-UNIoN has several
times presented. Not content with the
construction of road that binds the Brit
ISL possessions on the Pacific with those
on the Atlantic, Great Britain has entered
upon the scheme of securing connections in
| the United States that give her, unless
restrained, free access to the traffic Great
| ing depots of our transatlantic trade and
a foothold upon our soil that is nothing
| less than a menace to our trade and the
independence of our own system of rail
roads; and it has, as it had the right to do,
equipped and made independent of the
ordinary commercial risks, steamship
line that is stripping from us the Asiatic
trade. Behind all this far-seeing
business skill and unsurpassed adroit
management, is the ambition of the
/ English Government in its traditional
capacity of expansiveness. 1T conquers
more by the arts Of trade than by assaults
Of arms. 1t has set its goal so far as the
Northwest is concerned, boldly and IN
concealed for commercial domination of
the continent and that may mean political
supremacy also. When the disposition is
manifest on our part to withdraw from its
hands the means belonging to us with
which it aims to subdue us commercially,
and that Will aid its desire to outgrow us
in continental strength, it threatens to re-
taliate, and by coercion achieve that which
it cannot otherwise gain. The dispatches
that give Us this information are not the
conjurings of a reporters brain nor the in
vention of fertile wit. We are assured
that the Dominion Cabinet has under
grave consideration propositions to retail
ate upon the United States for withdraw
ing the bonding privilege in the forward
! ing of goods from one United States port
to another through Canada, our Canadian
brethren totally ignoring the fact that
they have, in direct and fragrant violation
| Of the treaty Of Washington, been steadily
bidding for the transport of our products
through the Dominion, by offering heavy
bonus for every ton shipped through the
| Canadian canals in consignment for export
under the English flag. Give to English
! commercial agencies the transportation of
the products of this country, and we mort
! gage to them the markets for them In
vest them with the power to control the
transportation agencies of the United
States, as they boldly demand, under sys-
TEN Of competition impossible to the
American carriers, and We might as we'll
make over to them the political control of
the nation So far from being alarmists,
We are judicially calm when we assert that
it is capable of demonstration, that the ag-
gressive, untiring and splendid commercial
spirit of Great Britain has set out for the
conquest of the United States by peace
full but not less humiliating domination of
the springs and arteries of our national