Note upon Mr. Goldwin Smith's Article in the 'Fortnightly Review' of April 1st, 1877, upon the 'Political Destiny of Canada'

Since nearly the whole of the foregoing pages were written, Mr. Goldwin Smith has published an article containing reasons why, in his opinion, the Dominion of Canada, in particular, and incidentally also, why the other English colonies cannot in the future be united with Great Britain and each other under one Imperial Government. He regards the hope of colonial representation as an extravagant dream. But when his reasons are examined, I think they will be found by no means of crushing weight. Mr. G. Smith well says, and I for one entirely agree with him, "The great forces prevail. They prevail at last, however numerous and apparently strong the secondary forces opposed to them may be. They prevailed at last in the case of German unity and in the case of Italian independence. In each of these cases the secondary forces were so heavily massed against the event that men renowned for practical wisdom believed the event would never come. It came, irresistible and irrevocable, and we now see that Bismarck and Cavour were only ministers of fate.

"Suspended, of course, and long suspended by the action of the secondary forces the action of the great forces may be. It was so in both the instances just mentioned. A still more remarkable instance is the long postponement of the union of Scotland with England by the antipathies resulting from the abortive attempts of Edward I., and by a subsequent train of historical accidents, such as the absorption of the energies of England in continental or civil wars. But the Union came at last, and, having the great forces on its side, it came for ever."

Mr. Smith then states that the great forces are in favour of the separation of Canada from the English empire. It is a little remarkable that the only page 59 instances he gives of great forces in the foregoing passage, are those that have compelled the political union of the various brandies of one race under one government. But the great forces on which he relies for compelling the separation of Canada from the empire, are, its distance from England, the divergence of interest and the divergence of political character of Englishmen living in those two parts of the empire, and lastly the attractions presented by the United States, with their identity of race, language, religion, and general institutions, to those of Canada, together with economic influences. Mr. Smith's opinion is a valuable one where it has been formed from facts which his residence in Canada and the United States of America has brought under his notice. His views are, however, here founded upon what he considers general possibilities, of which persons who have not resided in America may form as valuable opinions as himself. He is a witness to the existence of a strong Canadian feeling in favour of a continued connection with England, and to the "glamour of British association." His political predictions and wishes are on one side; the evidence that he is compelled to bear as to actual facts, is on the other. His local knowledge, however, enables him to show that certain forms of the Unionist feeling are of secondary and transient importance; but he entirely puts out of sight and undervalues the great force which is at work to prevent disintegration and create unity, and which, aided by the secondary forces, that he admits together make a strong cable, may be found of supreme importance—I mean the love and the power of race.

Of geographical distance, as a great force, he finds little else to say than that "few have fought against geography and prevailed," while he admits that increasing skill is likely to increase our powers of intercommunication by steam and telegraph, though he thinks the cost of transit will not be lessened. In truth, the ocean is no real barrier between England and America; it is our safest and best highway. It is an unfailing permanent road which requires no money to keep it fit for travelling, and which, to a great naval power, can be closed neither by public nor by private enemies. With no land between, we are adjacent countries. The strongest argument against Mr. Smith's views for the future is, that with far inferior means of communication than those which are now open to us, the union has continued to exist in the past. If England's distance from America is what Mr. Smith calls geography, then we have fought against it, and have prevailed.

With Mr. Goldwin Smith's next great force, of "divergence of interest," it is still more difficult to deal, for he does not say much more about it than that such a divergence exists, and is as wide as possible both in diplomatic and economical questions. It is difficult to see why Englishmen in Canada have nothing to do with the European and Oriental concerns of England, and with the development of their race in other parts of the world. As a matter of fact, page 60 however, such is not their opinion. Mr. Smith points out and laments that the Canadian has not such an exclusive attachment as he would wish to Canada, as the sole country round which his feelings of patriotism should cling; but he does not see that the cause of this is that the Canadian feels he is a member of a great and a wide-spread race, and owes attachment, not merely to the fortunes of the land upon which he resides, but to the race of which he is proud to be a member. That he lives where he does is an accidental circumstance; his relationship to the other members of his own race is a force out of his own control, affecting nearly every sentiment and hope that he has. Certainly Mr. Smith's way of regarding national ties is not the way of his countrymen, and helps to show his want of sympathy with their feelings That he apparently thinks it possible that the Chinese may ultimately be allowed to expel people of the British race from the Australian colonies, and that the unassimilated Irish may take their place in the United States, and possibly in England herself, is an example of the unsympathizing and jaundiced view with which he regards the progress and aspirations of his fellow-countrymen. Such is not the spirit in which Englishmen have made their way in the world, and will continue to make it.

The remissness that may possibly have been shown by the Imperial Government in the advocacy of the claims of Canada, in dealings with the United States, would be remedied by the colonial representation that I have attempted to urge in the foregoing pages; it has occurred, when it has, not so much from diversity of interest, as from want of some recognized way by which the Canadians could make known their wishes and wants in England.

It is scarcely an argument against the permanent unity of the empire that Canada has retained the same currency that it had previous to the secession of the United States, and which was inherited by both of them from the original Spanish colonizers of America.

It is undoubtedly in the power of the United States to interfere with and injure the trade of Canada by hostile duties, trade regulations, and the shutting up of their markets; but even Mr. Smith does not appear to suppose that Canada could be coerced into secession from the empire, and into a union with the States, by such means. It is more reasonable to believe that the people of the United States will come to see that their real interests lie in favour of free trade, and will enter into commercial treaties with the British Empire for the general advantage. Such treaties are far more likely to be negotiated by the Imperial Government, acting in the interests of the empire at large, and of the bulk of all the United States' customers, than by the government of Canada alone, which represents a very small part of them. I would also remark that it yet remains to be seen what will be the effect upon the United States themselves of the increased value which is now set upon the blood-relationships in the page 61 various peoples. It is not at all likely that they will be unaffected by it; in fact, there are signs that the consciousness of a common race with ourselves is already having some influence there; and if this is so, we need not expect that United States' influence will be used towards weakening the general power of their brothers remaining within the British Empire, and of which power they themselves reap many of the advantages.

Mr. Smith's third great force, the divergence of political character between the citizen of the Old and the citizen of the New World, is one still more likely to be attenuated as time goes on. He evidently conceives the English Government to be based upon feudalism and aristocratic pride, and therefore to offer the most marked contrast to the democracy and equality of the colonies. Whatever may be thought of some of the hereditary forms of English society, the policy of the government in Imperial matters, and domestic too, is as democratic, and in favour of free government, as that of the most popular republic. With regard to the government and its policy, aristocracy in England merely means that there is a supply of honest and educated men to fulfil the popular will in public affairs. It does not, and would not, affect Imperial policy, that England and Scotland have each of them an Established Church; and an hereditary Imperial Chamber could no more alter the course of affairs to suit aristocratic prejudices than the House of Lords does at present. Besides this, the representatives of the various colonies would bring with them to the popular House their own modes of thought, and would be a sufficient counterbalance to any retrograde tendencies on the part of the Home Ministers. If they should at the same time imbibe some of the high notions of political and personal honour which have so long distinguished English politicians, in place of the unscrupulosity and corruptness of which Mr. Smith accuses those of Canada, he would probably consider it an advantage to America.

With regard to the attractions of the United States, which Mr. Smith thinks will prove an irresistible force, all predictions, Mr. Smith's included, are mere guesses in the dark. Those attractions are not at present of great power, as Mr. Smith's whole paper bears unwilling witness, and there seems but little to attract in the immediate future. A divided people, a huge debt, gigantic profligacy in all branches of the executive government, are not things of a character to allure free and contented neighbours, who share but in a small degree in such curses, to a more intimate union with them. But these things are marked features of the United States as a community. The present commercial depression there, though no doubt only temporary, shows that republican government and boundless land are no preventives of the most serious evils which occur in modern civilized life. At the same time I am quite willing to admit that if under present circumstances the tie which binds Canada to the rest of the British Empire were loosened by the upsetting of the page 62 British Monarchy in a revolution at home, or by any other cause weakening the cohesion of the British race, the attraction to the United States, if they remained in their present form, might be too great to be resisted. If, however, some such Imperial union as I have urged should be adopted, it is more probable that the attraction to the rest of the British Empire would remain in the preponderance, and the circumstances under which the United States could exercise a superior influence would never arise. In such a case the attractive force might be found acting upon, rather than from, the United States themselves.

Mr. Smith asks what has been the destiny of colonies down to the present time, and what has become of the American dependencies of Spain, Portugal, France, and Holland? The colonies of Spain, except Cuba, have no doubt separated from her, but it was not until, by continued intermarriage with the native races, the people of those colonies had become Spaniards in nothing but name, and the principle of race had become a repellent instead of an attractive power. The government of Mexico since the separation from Spain has for considerable periods been carried on by full-blooded natives. The same has been the case in some of the South American States. There is surely no analogy between these instances and British colonies where no such deterioration of blood has taken place. In Brazil and the Portuguese colonies the same extinction of pure European blood had occurred before their separation from the mother-country, and the relation of Brazil to Portugal was further complicated i by dynastic disturbances. The colonies of Holland we have mostly ourselves acquired by the fortune of war, and are gradually assimilating the Dutch people there to the English type. Such a conquest of our own colonies by another nation does not at present appear probable. The lost colonies of France have been likewise either annexed by us like Canada, or seized by an over-mastering inferior and alien population like San Domingo. In Canada, as Mr. Smith points out, the French population remains practically unassimilated by the surrounding English one, and is no doubt a disturbing factor in the development of the Dominion in a British mould; but this would be equally the case if it were joined to the United States, the only other possible course for it. Besides, the United States would be far less likely than the Imperial Government to allow the continuance of the separate and ancient institutions to which the French Canadians are much attached, and the fear of a disturbance of these privileges would always of itself prevent them from intriguing for the separation from the empire and a union with the neighbouring people. I think it is clear that the causes which have produced the separation from themselves of the colonies of those other European nations do not exist to disturb the connection of British colonies with the mother-country.

As Mr. Smith aspires to the character of a political prophet, it is worth while to notice the manner in which some of his past prophecies appear to be page 63 working their fulfilment. In 1863, he published in a work called 'The Empire,' some letters which he had written in the previous year to the newspapers upon the subject of our colonial sway. In the Preface, p. xxi., he says:^* "If in the midst of the vast revolution which is going on over the world, the almost invisible filaments of political connection which still bind England to her colonies should at length cease to exist, and if she were to find that a few military positions no longer answered the purpose for which they had been occupied, or repaid the money they cost, history a century hence would not number this amongst the greatest events of an eventful age, nor give it so large a space in her record as she will give to other things of which England itself is the scene." Here Mr. Smith evidently connects, as likely to be contemporaneous circum-stances, the snapping of the tie which unites England to her colonies, and the abandonment of her military positions in them. The latter has almost universally taken place, and yet the tie remains stronger than ever. In one of the letters, on page 10, Mr. Smith says, that Lord Palmerston, though youthful in bodily vigour, was old in ideas, and unconscious of the great moral and material changes that had taken place in Europe since he first entered public life: and then proceeds, "But he will be succeeded, probably, by statesmen more imbued with the ideas and alive to the exigencies of our own age, and, depend upon it, such statesmen will be disposed to retrench our empire in order to add to our security and greatness." Lord Palmerston passed away twelve years ago, and five Ministries have since directed the fortunes of Great Britain; but her empire has been increased and not retrenched by them, and no government which showed a desire to diminish Her Majesty's dominions could stand for a session of Parliament. So much for Mr. Smith's predictions; but he sings the same song still.

Mr. Smith, in his recent article, asks if a great effective union of all the provinces of the British Crown could be made, what would be the good of it ? I have attempted in the foregoing pages to point out the many and most important benefits all branches of our race would receive, and I will only repeat now, that it would ensure that civilization should proceed in a smooth and even manner that one colony of Englishmen should not cut the throats and destroy the progress of other colonies of Englishmen; that the prosperity of Englishmen in one part of the world should be made conducive to the benefit of Englishmen in another, and the general and united progress of Englishmen, to the benefit of the world; that the great and humane principles of government which Englishmen have discovered, and upon which they act, should be observed in the future development of their race, and that they should be encouraged to take wide views and exhibit broad sympathies rather than to narrow the sphere of their influence, and to limit their power of good by local and often short-sighted selfishness.

page 64

If the prospect of the whole and united British race moving onward together in peace and in happiness to higher developments of civilization and social progress, produces glory to the people that exhibit it, so much the better, for it will be glory of the truest kind. But to the race, with such a prospect before it, that chooses from timidity, from selfishness, from want of a wide and noble aim to refrain from encountering the difficulties through which it may be realized, no glory will be accorded either by bystanders or by history; but it will be regarded as another' instance of a people to whom vast opportunities were accorded, but who were not strong or good enough to avail themselves of them.

And if such a prospect were realized, might not the mother-country share in that glory ? There would be a sufficient material advantage in it for her to satisfy the requirements of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, which Mr. Smith quotes for she would secure for herself in a couple of small islands a right to the protection, the care, and the respect of her children inhabiting half the world.