The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-06

in sentiment, barely half the populs ton is now British.
 Political parting from the mothe country vii not be the parting of tn heart. On the contrary, the bond
 the heart, which, as things are, is il some danger will be assured by it. A
 present we have seen that there is good deal of friction between the moth CT country and the colony; the mother country ealing on the colony for naval and military aid which the colony can
 not give; the colony complaining that
 the mother country fails to assert its
 interest in dealings with foreign gov
 ernments, gradually intrenching on the
 imperial prerogative and seeking to combine the immunities of dependen
 cy with the character and privileges of
 nation. The hawser is being fretted
 all the time.
 The feeling of British Canadians to-
 ward the mother country being what
 it is, the union of Canada with the
 United States, should it ever come, in
 place of precarious, uneasy and bar
 ren supremacy, with an impracticable
 duty of military defense, would give
 England a strong moral influence in
 the councils of the Western continent.
 There was not a little to be said in
 favor of twofold trial of democracy
 on this continent. IA Canadian republic permanently independent of the United
 States might have been possible so long as anything like the unity of territor- ial basis apparently indispensable to the existance of national unity remained. But when the Dominion was stretched in widely separated sections across the whole continent, the semblances of ter ritorial unity ceased to exist.
 The Northwest, with it's boundless wheat fields. has been filling with the most miscellaneous elements-Cana- dian, British, Icelandlc, Galician, Swed- ish, Russian Doukhobors and Mennon- ties and Jewish. All immigration has been somewhat blindly welcomed by an uncritical desire of an increase of popu- lation, which is supposed to be sure increase of prosperity Even if the inn migrant is a good farmer he may not be good citizen or good material for q free commonwealth. In elections ne is said to be apt to negotiate through the headman of his clan. But now there is @ great thrush of American farmers from adjoining states of the Union That these men will be good Canadian citizens need not be doubted. The institutions and laws of Canada are much the same as our own, and the hatred of royalty no long, CT burns in American breasts. Imper- ialists they will not be, nor will they let themselves be shut out from trade with the adjoining states for the bene- fit of British capitalists. At the rate at which the Northwest Is filling, and with the expense of cultivable land which it is now known to contain, 1t must before long make its predomi- nance felt politically, supposing that tho confederation holds together. This again forms an important element in any forecast of Canadian destiny.
 It is here in the New World that the destiny is cast and that his i part has to be played. Here it is that he has to do what he can 10 make pop ular government stable, wise and bene- fcent. At present his eyes are always being turned toward a state of the Old World which cannot be reproduced in a ' new world This Is q bad part of the prolongation of the state of dependence, | md justifes the policy of British states men in former days, who generally looked forward to colonial emancipa- tlon.- Goodwin Smith in The Contem- pDrary Review.