Project Gutenberg's Canada and the States, by Edward William Watkin

Project Gutenberg's Canada and the States, by Edward William Watkin Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Canada and the States Author: Edward William Watkin Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6874] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 6, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANADA AND THE STATES *** Produced by Michelle Shephard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. CANADA AND THE STATES RECOLLECTIONS 1851 to 1886. BY SIR E. W. WATKIN, BART., M.P. "_If the Maritime Provinces [of Britain] would join us, spontaneously, to-day--sterile as they may be in the soil under a sky of steel--still with their hardy population, their harbours, fisheries, and seamen, they would greatly strengthen and improve our position_, and aid us in our struggle for equality upon the ocean. _If we would succeed upon the deep, we must either maintain our fisheries or_ ABSORB THE PROVINCES." E. H. DERBY, Esq, Report to the Revenue Commissioners of the United States, 1866. [Illustration: The Duke of Newcastle, K.G.] _In the absence of any formal Dedication, I feel that to no one could the following pages be more appropriately inscribed than to_ Lady Watkin. _On her have fallen the anxieties of our home life during my many long absences away on the American Continent--which Continent she once, in 1862, visited with me. My business, in relation to Canada, has, from time to time, been undertaken with her knowledge, and under her good advice; and no one has been animated with a stronger hope for Canada, as a great integral part of the Empire of the Queen, than herself._ _E. W. WATKIN._ _ROSE HILL, NORTHENDEN,_ _2nd May, 1887._ PREFACE. The following pages have been written at the request of many old friends, some of them co-workers in the cause of permanent British rule over the larger part of the Great Northern Continent of America. In 1851 I visited Canada and the United States as a mere tourist, in search of health. In 1861 I went there on an anxious mission of business; and for some years afterwards I frequently crossed the Atlantic, not only during the great Civil War between the North and South, but, also, subsequent to its close. In 1875 I had to undertake another mission of responsibility to the United States. And, last year, I traversed the Dominion of Canada from Belle Isle to the Pacific. I returned home by San Francisco and the Union Pacific Railways to Chicago; and by Montreal to New York. Thence to Liverpool, in that unsurpassed steamer, the "Etruria," of the grand old Cunard line. I ended my visits to America, as I began them, as a tourist. This passage was my thirtieth crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Within the period from 1851 to 1886, history on the North American Continent has been a wonderful romance. Never in the older stories of the world's growth, have momentous changes been effected, and, apparently, consolidated, in so short a time, or in such rapid succession. Regarding the United States, the slavery of four millions of the negro race is abolished for ever, and the black men vote for Presidents. A great struggle for empire--fought on gigantic measure--has been won for liberty and union. Turning to Canada, the British half of the Continent has been moulded into one great unity, and faggotted together, without the shedding of one drop of brothers' blood--and in so tame and quiet a way, that the great silent forces of Nature have to be cited, to find a parallel. In this period, the American Continent has been spanned by three main routes of iron-road, uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: and one of these main routes passes exclusively through British territory--the Dominion of Canada. The problem of a "North-west Passage" has been solved in a new and better way. It is no longer a question of threading dark and dismal seas within the limits of Arctic ice and snow, doubtful to find, and impossible, if found, to navigate. Now, the two oceans are reached by land, and a fortnight suffices for the conveyance of our people from London or Liverpool to or from the great Pacific, on the way to the great East. Anyone who reads what follows will learn that I am an Imperialist--that I hate little-Englandism. That, so far as my puny forces would go, I struggled for the union of the Canadian Provinces, in order that they might be retained under the sway of the best form of government--a limited monarchy, and under the best government of that form--the beneficent rule of our Queen Victoria. I like to say our Queen: for no sovereign ever identified herself in heart and feeling, in anxiety and personal sacrifice, with a free and grateful people more thoroughly than she has done, all along. In this period of thirty-six years the British American Provinces have been, more than once, on the slide. The abolition of the old Colonial policy of trade was a great wrench. The cold, neglectful, contemptuous treatment of Colonies in general, and of Canada in particular, by the doctrinaire Whigs and Benthamite-Radicals, and by Tories of the Adderley school, had, up to recent periods, become a painful strain. Denuding Canada of the Imperial red-coat disgusted very many. And the constant whispering, at the door of Canada, by United States influences, combined with the expenditure of United States money on Nova Scotian and other Canadian elections, must be looked to, and stopped, to prevent a slide in the direction of Washington. On the other hand, the statesmanlike action of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Colonial Minister in 1859, in erecting British Columbia into a Crown Colony, was a break-water against the fell waves of annexation. The decided language of Her Majesty's speech in proroguing Parliament at the end of 1859 was a manifesto of decided encouragement to all loyal people on the American Continent: and, followed as it was by the visit--I might say the triumphal progress--of the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Colonial Minister, the great Duke of Newcastle, through Canada, in 1860, the loyal idea began to germinate once more. Loyal subjects began to think that no spot of earth over which the British flag had once floated would ever, again, be given up--without a fight for it. Canada for England, and England for Canada! But, what will our Government at home do with the new "North-west Passage" through Canada? The future of Canada depends upon the decision. What will the decision be? How soon will it be given? Is this great work, the Canadian Pacific Railway, to be left as a monument, at once, of Canada's loyalty and foresight, and of Canada's betrayal: or is it to be made the new land-route to our Eastern and Australian Empire? If it is to be shunted, then the explorations of the last three hundred years have been in vain. The dreams of some of the greatest statesmen of past times are reduced to dreams, and nothing more. The strength given by this glorious self-contained route, from the old country to all the new countries, is wasted. On the other hand, if those who now govern inherit the great traditions of the past; if they believe in Empire; if they are statesmen--then, a line of Military Posts, of strength and magnitude, beginning at Halifax on the Atlantic, and ending at the Pacific, will give power to the Dominion, and, wherever the red-coat appears, confidence in the old brave country will be restored. Then the soldier, his arms and our armaments, will have their periodical passages backwards and forwards through the Dominion. Mails for the East, for Australia, and beyond, will pass that way; and the subject of every part of the Empire will, as he passes, feel that he is treading the sacred soil of real liberty and progress. Which is it to be? Some years ago, Sir John A. Macdonald said, "I hope to live to see the day--and if I do not, that my son may be spared, to see Canada the right arm of England. To see Canada a powerful auxiliary of the Empire, not, as now, a source of anxiety, and a source of danger." Does Her Majesty's Government echo this aspiration? Thinking people will recognize that the United States become, year by year, less English and more Cosmopolitan; less conservative and more socialist; less peaceful and more aggressive.

Load more