Reference has been made to the facts that Big Business has up to the present been unable to get control of the reins of government in Canada, that the courts have been kept comparatively free of political influence and that the doors of underground politics are not easily pried open by corruption. Why is this? Canadians would fain take unction to themselves that it is owing to their superior national integrity, but this is nonsense.
Exuberant forest growth is always characterized by some fungus and dry rot. How has Canada escaped so much of this fungus excrescence of representative government? To get at the reason for this it is necessary to trace back for a little space the historic growth of Canada's form of government. We speak of Canada's constitution being the British North America Act. As a matter of fact, Canada's constitution is more than an act—more than a dry and hard and inflexible formula to which growth must conform. Rather than plaster cast into which growing life must fit itself, Canada's constitution is a living organism evolved from her own mistakes and struggles of the past and her own needs as to the present. Canada's constitution is not some pocket formula which some doctrinaire—with apologies to France—has whipped out of his pocket to remedy all ills. Canada's constitution is like the scientific data of empirical medicine; it is the result of centuries' experiments, none the less scientific because unconscious.
One need not trace the growth of government to the days prior to English rule. When England took over Canada by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the main thing to remember is that the French-Canadian was guaranteed the free exercise of his religion. This—and not innate loyalty to an alien government—was the real reason for Quebec refusing to cast in her lot with the revolting American colonies. This was the reason for Quebec remaining stanch in the War of 1812, and this is the reason for Quebec to-day standing a solid unit against annexation. We must not forget what a high emissary from Rome once jocularly said of a religious quarrel in Canada—Quebec was more Catholic than the Pope.
Following the military régime of the Conquest came the Quebec Act of 1774.—Please note, contemporaneous with the uprising of the American colonies, Canada is given her first constitution. The Governor and legislative council are to be appointed by the Crown, and full freedom of worship is guaranteed. French civil law and English criminal law are established; and the Church is confirmed in its title to ecclesiastical property—which was right when you consider that the foundations of the Church in Quebec are laid in the blood of martyrs. Just here intervenes the element which compelled the reshaping of Canada's destiny. When the American colonies gained their independence, there came across the border to what are now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and Ontario some forty thousand Loyalists mainly from New England and the South. These Loyalists, of course, refused to be dominated by French rule; so the Constitutional Act was passed in 1791 by the Imperial Parliament. The people of Canada were represented for the first time in an assembly elected by themselves, The Governor-General for Quebec—Lower Canada—and the Lieutenant-Governor for Ontario—Upper Canada—were both appointed by the Crown. The Executive, or Cabinet, was chosen by the Governor. The weakness of the new system was glaringly apparent on the surface. While the assembly was elected in each province by the people, the assembly had no direct control over the Executive. Downing Street, England, chose the Governors; and the Governors chose their own junta of advisers; and all the abuses of the Family Compact arose, which led to the Rebellion of '37 under William Lyon MacKenzie in Ontario and Louis Papineau in Quebec. Judges at this time sat in both Houses, and Canada learned the bitter lesson of keeping her judiciary out of politics. As the power of appointment rested exclusively with the Governor and his circle, it can be believed that the French of Quebec suffered disabilities and prejudice.
Hopelessly at sea as to the cause of the continual unrest in her colonies and undoubtedly sad from the loss of her American possessions, England now sent out a commissioner to investigate the trouble; and it is to the findings of this commissioner that the United Kingdom has since owed her world-wide success in governing people by letting them govern themselves. People sometimes ask why England has been so successful in governing one-fifth of the habitable globe. She does not govern one-fifth the habitable globe. She lets much of it govern itself; and it was Lord Durham, coming out as Governor-General and high commissioner at this time, who laid the foundations of England's success in colonizing. His report has been the Magna Charta and Declaration of Independence of the self-governing colonies of the British Empire.
First of all, government must be entrusted to the house representing the people. Second, the granting of moneys must be controlled by those paying the taxes. Third, the Executive must be responsible not only to the Crown but to the representatives of the people. It is here the Canadian system differs from the American. The Secretary, or Cabinet Minister, can not hold office one day under the disapproval of the House, no matter what his tenure of office.
The Act of 1840 resulted from Durham's report. Upper and Lower Canada were united under one government—which was really the forerunner of confederation in '67. The House was given exclusive control of taxation and expenditure. Nothing awakened Canada so acutely to the necessity of federating all British North America as the Civil War in the United States, when the States Right party fought to secede. Red River and British Columbia had become peopled. The maritime provinces settled by French from Quebec and New England Loyalists were alien in thought from Upper and Lower Canada. The cry "54-40 or fight," the setting up of a provisional government by Oregon, the Riel Rebellion in Manitoba, the rush of California gold miners to Cariboo—all were straws in a restless wind blowing Canada's destiny hither and whither. Confederation was not a pocket theory. It was a result born of necessity, and the main principles of confederation embodied in the British North America Act had been foreshadowed in Durham's report. Durham himself suffered the fate of too many of the world's great. He had come out to Canada to settle a bitter dispute between the little oligarchy round the royal Governor and the people. He sided with neither and was abjured by both. The sentences against the patriots he had set aside or softened. The royalists he condemned but did not punish. Both sides poured charges against Durham into the office of the Colonial Secretary in England, Durham died of a broken heart, but his report laid the foundation of England's future colonial policy.
By the British North America Act of 1867, passed by the Imperial Parliament, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick came into the Union. Later Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories and British Columbia joined. Up to the present Newfoundland has stood aside. Under the British North America Act, Canada is ruled to-day.
There is first the Imperial government represented by a Governor-General.The commandant of Canada's regular militia is also an Imperial officer.
There is second the federal government with executive, legislative and judicial powers; or a cabinet, a parliament, a supreme court.
There are third the provincial governments with executive, legislative and judicial powers.
Details of each section of government can not be given here; but several facts should be noted; for they explain the practical workings of Canada's system.
The Witenagemot—or Saxon council of wise men—stands for Canada's ideal of a parliament. It is not so much a question of spoils. It is not so much a case of "the outs" ejecting "the ins." I have never heard of any party in Canada taking the ground, "Here—you have been in long enough; it's our turn." I have never heard a suggestion as to tenure of office being confined to "one term" for fear of a leader becoming a Napoleon. If a leader be efficient—and it is thought the more experienced he is, the more efficient he will be—he can hold office as long as he lives if the people keep on electing him.
The Cabinet—or inner council of advisers to the Governor-General—must be elected by the people and directly responsible to the House. At its head stands the Premier.
Within her own jurisdiction Canada's legislature has absolute power. If her treaties or acts should conflict with Imperial interests, they would be disallowed by the Imperial Privy Council as unconstitutional, or ultra vires. Likewise of the provinces, if any of their acts conflicted with federal interests, they would be disallowed as ultra vires.
Should the Governor-General differ from the Cabinet in office, he must either recede from his own position or dismiss his advisers and send them to the country for the verdict of the people. Should the people endorse the Ministry, the Governor-General must either resign or recede from his stand. I know of no case where such a contingency has arisen. A Governor-General is careful never to conflict with a Ministry endorsed by the electorate.
Once a man has received an appointment to a position in the civil service of Canada he must keep absolutely aloof from politics. This is not a law but it is a custom, the violation of which would cost a man his position.
The Parliament in the Dominion consists of the Commons and the Senate. The Commons are elected by the people. The Senators are appointed by the Governor-General, strictly under advice of the party in office, for life. Senators must be thirty years of age and possess property over four thousand dollars in value above their liabilities. The Senator resides in the district which he represents. The Commoner may represent a district in which he does not reside, and, on the whole, this is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. It permits a district that has special needs to choose a man of great character and power resident in another district. If he fails to meet the peculiar needs of that district, he will not be reelected. If he meets the needs of the district which he represents he has the additional prestige of his influence in another electoral district. A Senator can be removed for only four reasons: bankruptcy, absence, change of citizenship, conviction of crime.
At a time when the United States is so generally in favor of the election of Senators by direct vote, when England is trending so preponderately in favor of curbing the veto power of the House of Lords, it seems remarkable that Canada never questions the power of the Senator appointed for life.
Though officially supposed to be appointed by the Governor-General, the Senator is in reality never appointed except on recommendation of the prevailing Cabinet which means—the party in power. The appointments being for life and the emolument sufficient to guarantee a good living conformable with the style required by the official position, the Senator appointed for life—like the judge appointed for life—soon shows himself independent of purely party behests. He is depended upon by the Commoners to veto and arrest popular movements, which would be inimical to public good, but which the Commoner dare not defeat for fear of defeat in reelection. For instance, a few years ago a labor bill was introduced in the Commons as to compensation for injuries. In theory, it was all right. In practice, it was a blackmail levy against employers. The Commoners did not dare reject it for fear of the vote in one particular province. What they did was meet the Senate in unofficial caucuses. They said: We shall pass this bill all three readings; but we depend on you—the Senate—to reject it. We can go to the province and say we passed the bill and ask for the support of that province; but because the bill would be inimical to the best interests of other provinces, we depend on you, the Senate, to defeat it. And the Senate defeated it.
When older democracies are curtailing the strength of veto power in upper houses, it is curious to find this dependence of a young democracy on veto power. Instead of the life privileges leading to an abuse of insolence and Big Business, up to the present in Canada, life tenure independent of politics has led to independence. The appointments being for life guarantees that many of the incumbents are not young, and this imparts to the Upper House that quality of the Witenagemot most valued by the ancient Saxons—the council of the aged and the experienced and the wise.
Active, aggressive power, of course, resides chiefly with the Commons. Representation here is arranged according to the population and must be readjusted after every census. "Rep. by Pop." was the rallying cry that effected this arrangement. No property qualification is required from the member of the House of Commons, but he must be a British subject. He must not have been convicted of any crime, minor or major.
Franchise in Canada is practically universal suffrage. At least it amounts to that. Voters must be registered. They must be British subjects. They must be twenty-one years of age. They must not be insane, idiots or convicts. They must own real property to the value of three hundred dollars in cities, two hundred dollars in towns, one hundred and fifty dollars in the country; or they must have a yearly income of three hundred dollars. A farmer's son has the right to vote without these qualifications, evidently on the ancient Saxon presumption that a free-holder represents more vitally the interests of a country than the penniless floater, who neither works nor earns. In other words, the carpet-bag voter does not yet play any part in Canadian politics. Bad as the corruption is in some cases among the foreigners, when votes are bought at two dollars to five dollars, the point has not yet been reached when a carpet-bag gang of boarding-house floaters and saloon heelers can be transferred from a secure ward to a doubtful ward and so submerge the political rights of permanent residents.
Judges can not vote in Canada. In fact, they can take no part, direct or indirect, by influence or speech, in politics. This was one of the things fought out in the '37 Rebellion and forever settled. Canada could not conceive of a man who had been a judge being nominated for the premiership or as Governor. Of course, when Liberals are in power, as advisers of the Governor-General, they recommend more Liberals for judgeships than Conservatives; and when Conservatives are in power, they recommend for judgeships more Conservatives than Liberals. I think of attorneys who were penniless strugglers in the Liberal ranks of my childhood days in Winnipeg who are to-day dignified judges; and I think of other attorneys, who were penniless strugglers in Conservative ranks who have been advanced under the Borden regime to judgeships; but the point is, having been so advanced, they pass a chasm which they can never retrace without impeachment—the chasm is party politics. They are independent of popular favor. They can be impeached and displaced. They are forever disgraced by defalcation in office. By observing the duties of office, they are secure for life and held in an esteem second only to that of the Governor-General.
You will notice that it is all more a matter of public sentiment than a law; of custom than of court. That is what I mean when I say that Canada's constitution is a vital, living, growing thing, not a dead formula by which the Past binds and impedes the Present and the Future.
There must be a session of the Dominion Parliament once every year. Five years is the limit of any tenure of office by the Commons. Every five years the Commoners must go to the country for reelection. Usually the government in power goes to the country for reendorsement before the term of Parliament expires.
Laws on corrupt practices are very strict and what is more—they are generally enforced. The slightest profit, direct or indirect of a member, vacates his seat. Corruption on the part of underlings, of which they have known nothing, vacates an election. A member of Parliament can not participate directly or indirectly in any public work benefiting his district. He is not in it for what he can get out of it. He is in it for what he can give to it. Expenses of election to a postage stamp must be published after election.
The methods of conducting business in Parliament need not be discussed here, except to say that any member can introduce a bill, any member can present a petition from the humblest inhabitant of the commonwealth, and any member can speak on a motion provided he gains the floor first.
Judges are appointed and paid by the Dominion government, not by the provincial. Decisions by provincial judges—appointed by the Dominion government—can be appealed to a Supreme Court of Canada. Judges can be removed only on petition to the Governor-General for misbehavior.
Dominion taxes in Canada are indirect—on imports. As stated elsewhere, the main power in Canada is vested in federal authorities. Only local affairs—education, excise, municipal matters, drainage, local railroads, etc.—are left to the provinces.
Every man in Canada is supposed to be liable for military training if called on, but the number of men annually drilled is about fifty thousand. Hitherto a man appointed from the Imperial Forces has been the commanding general in Canada. It need scarcely be said that if Canada is to hold her own in Imperial plans, if she is to become a power in the struggle for ascendency on the Pacific, her equipment both as to land forces and marine are ridiculously inadequate. They are the equipment of a member in Imperial plans who is skulking his share.
Provincial courts are, of course, administered by provincial officers; but these are appointed by the Governor-General advised by the Cabinet of the federal party in power. The Lieutenant-Governor of the province is appointed by the Governor-General advised by the party in power. He is paid by the Dominion. Judges of superior courts must be barristers of ten years' good standing at the bar of their provinces. All judges and justices of the peace must have some property qualification. Rascals with criminal records are not railroaded into judgeships in Canada. I know of a judge in San Francisco who until the advent of the woman vote literally held his position by reason of his alliance with the white slavers. I know of another judge in New York who held his position in spite of a criminal record by reason of the fact he could get himself elected by the disreputable gangs. These things are virtually impossible under the Canadian system. In the future the system may prove too rigid. At the present time it works and keeps the courts clear of political influence.
Juries are not so universal in Canada as in the United States. In civil cases, where the points of law are complicated, the tendency is to let the judge guide the verdict of the court.
There is one feature of Canadian justice which sentimentalists deplore. It is that the lash is still used for crimes of violence against the person and for bestiality. This is not a relic of barbarism. It is the result of careful thought on the part of the Department of Justice—the thought being that it is useless to speak to a man capable of bestiality in terms not articulate to his nature; and the fact remains that criminals of this class seldom come back for second terms of punishment for the same sort of crimes.
If you ask why few homicides are punished in the United States, and few escape in Canada—I can not answer. Political expediency, party heelers, technicalities—the dotting of an i, the crossing of a t, the omission of a comma—have no effect whatsoever on Canadian justice. The courts are never defied, and the law takes its course.
The law not only takes its course relentlessly but the pursuit of crime literally never desists. This feature of Canadian justice is a rude sharp shock to the unruly element pouring in with the new colonists. A Montana gunman blew into a Canadian frontier town and in accordance with custom began "to shoot up" the bar rooms. In twenty-four hours he awakened from his spree under sentence of sixty days' hard labor. "Let me out of this blamed Can-a-day," he cursed. "Who'd 'a' thought of takin' any offense from touchin' up this blamed dead town?"
A Texas outlaw succeeded in inducing a young Englishman of the verdantly bumptious and moneyed sort to go homestead hunting with him. The Indians saw the two ride into the back country. In spring only the Texan came out. I forget what his explanation of the Englishman's disappearance was. In any other country under the sun, who would have ridden two hundred miles beyond nowhere to investigate the story of an outlaw about a young fool, who had plainly been a candidate for trouble? But an old Indian chief meandered into the barracks of the nearest Mounted Police station, sat him down on the floor and after smoking countless pipes let drop the fact that two settlers had "gone in" and only "one man—he come out." That was enough. Two policemen were detailed on the case. They rode to the abandoned homesteads. In the deserted log cabin nothing seemed amiss, but some distance away on a bluff a stained ax was found; yet farther away a mound not a year old. Beneath it the remains of the Englishman were found with ax hacks in the skull. It was now a year since the commission of the crime and the murderer was by this far enough away. Why put the country to the expense of trailing down a criminal who had decamped? Those two young Mounted Policemen were told to find the criminal and not come back till they had found him. They trailed him from Alberta to Montana, from Montana to the Orient, from China back to Texas, where he was found on a homestead of his own. Now the proof of murder was of the most tenuous sort. One of the Mounted Policemen disguised himself as a laborer and obtained work on an adjoining homestead. It took two years to gain the criminal's confidence and confession. The man was arrested and extradited to Canada. If I remember rightly, the trial did not last a week, and the murderer was hanged forthwith.
Instances of this kind could be retailed without number, but this one case is typical. It is something more than relentlessness. It is more than keeping politics out of the courts. It is a tacit national recognition of two basic truths: that the protection of innocence is the business of the courts more than the protection of guilt; that having delegated to the Department of Justice the enforcement of criminal law, Canada holds that Department of Justice responsible for every infraction of law. The enforcement is greatly aided by the fact that criminal law in Canada is under federal jurisdiction. An embezzler can not defalcate in Nova Scotia, lightly skip into Manitoba and put both provinces to expense and technical trouble apprehending him. In the States I once was annoyed by a semi-demented blackmailer. When I sent for the sheriff—whose deputy, by the way, hid when summoned—the lunatic stepped across the state border, and it would have cost me two hundred dollars to have apprehended him. As the culprit was a menace more to the community than to me, I went on west on a trip to a remote part of Alberta. I had not been in Alberta twenty-four hours before the chief constable called to know if this blackmailer of whom he had read in the press, could be apprehended in Canada. The why of this vigilance on one side of the line and remissness on the other, I can no more explain than why American industrial progress is so amazingly swift and Canadian industrial progress is so amazingly slow.
There is very little wish-washy coddling of the criminal in Canada. While in the penitentiary he is cared for physically, mentally and spiritually. When released, he is helped to start life afresh; but if he keeps falling and falling, he is put where he will not propagate his species and hurt others in his back-sliding.
"I regret," said a judge in a Winnipeg court, "to sentence such a youthful offender." The prisoner was a young foreigner who attacked another man viciously in a drunken brawl. "But foreigners must learn that Canadian law can not be broken with impunity," and he sent the young man to what was practically a life sentence.
"Hard on the poor devil," said a court attendant.
"Yes," retorted a westerner who lived in the foreign settlement, "but it's an all-fired good thing for Canada."
The case of a judge in British Columbia is famous on the Pacific Coast. It was in the old days of murder and robbery on the trail to the gold diggings of Cariboo. In the face of the plainest evidence the jury had refused to convict. The astounded judge turned amid tense silence in fury on the prisoner.
"The jury pronounces the prisoner not guilty," he said, "and I strongly recommend him to go out and cut their throats."
Reference has been made to an Imperial court official assassinated by an angry Hindu conspirator in a Vancouver court room. The assassin was sentenced to death nine days from the commission of the crime, and if any newspaper had attempted to make a head-line affair out of it, or "to try the jury" for trying the prisoner, the editors and owners of that paper would have been sent to jail for contempt.
The gradual rise of the two political parties dates from the adoption of a high tariff by the Conservatives after confederation. Prior to 1837 Canadian parties consisted simply of the Outs and the Ins. The advanced Radicals, who formed themselves into a party to oust the Family Compact, called themselves Liberals. The entrenched oligarchy called themselves Conservatives. After confederation, by force of circumstances, namely the refusal of tariff concessions from the United States, the Conservatives, who were in power, became the high tariff party. The Liberals, when out of power, advocated tariff for revenue only. Also by force of circumstances until the transfer of the balance of power from Quebec to the New West, the party in office had a tendency to play for the French Catholic vote of Quebec; the party out of office coquetted with the ultra-Protestant vote of Ontario. This naturally worked toward the provincial governments being Liberal, when the federal government was Conservative; and vice versa. The Liberal in provincial politics was Liberal in federal politics, and the Conservative in federal politics was Conservative in provincial politics; but the policy has always been for the Outs first to attack the Ins provincially—to win the outposts before attacking the entrenched power of the federal government. Before Sir John Macdonald's Conservative administration was defeated there was a long series of victories by the Liberals in the provinces, and before Sir Wilfred Laurier's Liberal government was defeated the Conservatives had captured the most of the provincial governments. With the Conservatives professing high tariff as economic salvation and the Liberals regarding high tariff as economic damnation, it seems almost heresy to set down that the line of demarkation between the two great parties in practice is really one of Outs and Ins. The only tariff reductions made by the Liberals were on British imports, and this did not lower the average on British imports to the level of the average duty on American imports; when the high tariff Conservatives came back to power, the duties were not shoved to higher levels. This, too, has all been by force of circumstances. When both parties would have grasped eagerly at tariff reductions from the United States, those concessions could not be obtained. When the tariff concessions were offered, Canada had already built up such intrenched interests of her own in factory, mill and transportation that she was not in a position to accept the offer. Laurier did not see this, but many of his party did and refused to support him in reciprocity.
At time of writing, to an outsider, there is in practice no difference between the two parties; but this can hardly remain a permanent condition. As long as the war lasts both parties will be a unit in support of Imperial defense. The day the war is over Canada may have to consider, not Imperial, but Dominion defense; and this is bound to split the parties up on entirely new lines. The French Nationalists are for standing aside from all European entanglements and resting secure under the Monroe Doctrine. The two million Americans in the West may be expected to advocate the same policy. The British and the Canadians of British descent in Canada may be expected to take an aggressive stand for active self-defense; for defense may be one of Canada's next big problems.
Up to the present, Canadians have considered it a superiority that their constitution—the British North America Act—could be so easily amended. As long as Canada is peopled by Canadians, it is an advantage to work under a constitution that may be modified to suit the growing need of a growing nation, but one is constrained to ask what if Galicians and Germans ever acquired the balance of voting power in Canada? There are half as many German-born Germans in the United States as there are native-born Canadians in Canada. What if such a tide of German immigration came to Canada? Would it be an advantage or a disadvantage that the country's constitution could be so easily amended by the Imperial Parliament? Or more striking still, suppose the Hindu, a British subject, began peopling Western Canada by the million. Suppose the Hindu, a British subject, voted in Canada for a change in the constitution! Can one conceive for one minute of the Imperial government refusing to amend the British North American Act? Canadians sometimes refer to the American Constitution as too fixed and inelastic for modern conditions. They sometimes wonder how certain famous constitutional lawyers could make a living without the American Constitution to interpret and argue before the Supreme Court, but Americans and Canadians are to-day working out from different angles a great world experiment in self-government. It remains to be seen which experiment will stand the stress of world-convulsing changes. We need not theorize. Time will arbitrate.
Some one has said that the life of a nation is but the shadow of the units composing it; or the life of a nation is but the replica of the life of the individuals in it. Massed figures on gross exports are but the total thrift of a multitude of toiling men. Wheat production to feed a hungry empire is but one farmer's tireless vigilance multiplied by hundreds of thousands of other farmers. What manner of man is the Canadian behind all these figures attesting material prosperity? What manner of being is the Canadian woman, his partner? Is the Canadian a Socialist, or an Individualist? Does he believe that each man should stand upon his own feet or lean upon a state crutch? There is no state church in Canada. Then, what part does religion play? Is it a shadow, or a substance? Is it a refuge for the unfit and the weak to shift the responsibility for their own failure to the fatalism of the will of God; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right for right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in will power; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Why hasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature never was more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quiet rural scenery of the maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to the far-flung epic of the fenceless prairies and the Homeric grandeur of the mountains. Why are quiet rural beauty and illimitable freedom and lofty splendor not reflected in poem and novel and ballad and picture? The Canadian may answer—We go in more for athletics than aesthetics: we are living literature, not writing it. In our snow-covered prairies edged by the violet mist, lined in silver and pricked at night by the diamond light of a million stars, we are living art, not painting it. That our mountains are dumb and inarticulate, that our forests chant the litany of the pines untranslated to the winds of heaven, and that our cataracts thunder their diapasons inimitable to art—is no proof that though we are dumb and inarticulate, we are not lifted and transported and inspired by the wondrous beauties of the heritage God has given us. The Canadian may say this theoretically, but is he strengthened in body and made greater in soul by the mystic splendors of his country? In a word, has the Canadian found himself? He is not self-conscious, if that be what is meant by finding self; and that may be a good thing; for self-consciousness is of one of two things—the vanity of femininity in its adolescence, or the picayune pecking introspection of natures thrown in on self instead of exuberantly spending energy in effort outside of self. Self-consciousness is too much ego, whether it be old or young; and the devil must be cast out into the swine over the cliff into the sea, before there can enter into men, or nations, that Spirit of God which makes for great service in Destiny.
Has Canada found herself?
Without any brief for or against Socialism as a system, it may be said that for many years Socialism will play little part in Canadian affairs. In areas like Germany, where the population is three hundred and ten per square mile; or France, where the population is one hundred and eighty-nine per square mile; or England, where the population is over five hundred per square mile; or Saxony, where the population is eight hundred and thirty per square mile—one can understand the claim of the most rabid and extreme Socialist that the great proportion of the people can never by any chance own their own freehold; that the great proportion of the toilers are not having a fair chance in an open field; but in Canada where there are millions of acres untaken, where the population is not quite two to the square mile, it is impossible to raise the cry that every man, and any man, can not have all the freehold he is manly enough to go out and take. The grievance becomes preposterous and a joke. There is more land uninhabited and open to preemption in Canada than is owned in freehold. There are more forests standing in Canada than have been cut. There are more mines than there are workmen, and only the edge of Canada's mineral lands have been explored. There are more fish uncaught than have ever been hooked. I have heard soap-box orators in Canada rant about the plutocrats gobbling the resources of the country; and I have gone to their offices and shown them on the map that any man could become a plutocrat by going out and gobbling some more, provided he had brains and brawn and gobbled hard enough instead of gabbled; and I have been answered these very words: "But we don't want that. We want to inflame the masses with hatred for the classes so that the laborer will take over all industry." When I have pointed out that there are "no masses" nor "classes" in Canada—that all are laborers, I have been met with a blank stare.
The case is a standing joke in one province of a man who as an agitator used to rave at "the British flag as a bloody rag." The police were never quite sure whether to arrest him for treason or let him blow off steam and exhaust. They wisely chose the latter course. Prosperity came to the town. The man sold his small bit of real estate for something under a hundred thousand. He didn't stay to divide his unearned increment among his fellow agitators. He hied him to retire to the land where "the flag was a bloody rag." This, of course, proves nothing for or against Socialism as a system. There was a Judas among the apostles; but it illustrates the point that Canada is still at the stage where every man may become a capitalist, a vested righter, the owner of his own freehold. When every man may have a vested property right in a country—not as a gift but as the reward of his own effort in a fair field with no favors—it is a fairly safe prophecy that the vested rights earned and held by the fit and the strong will never be handed over as a gift to the unfit and the weak and the don't-trys. The savings of the man who has not squandered his earnings on saloons and reckless living will never be taxed to support in idleness—even an idle old age—the feckless who have spent on stomach and lust what other men save. Sounds hard; doesn't it, in the face of almost universal nostrums for the salvation and propagation of the useless? But it is like Canada's climate. Perhaps the climate has a good deal to do with it. Hard it may be; but the issue is clean-cut and crystal clear—work, or starve; be fit, or die; make good, or drop out; here is a fair field and no favors! Gird yourself as a man to it, and no puling puny whining for pity!
Can Canada keep a fair field and no favors? Her destiny as a power depends on the answer to that question. In every city in Canada to-day are growing up crowded foreign quarters peopled by men and women who have never had a fair field—with class hate in their hearts for inherited social wrongs; derelicts, no-goods, unfits, born unfit through no fault of their own. Have they no claim? Can Canada as a foster mother redeem such as these? Her destiny as a power depends on the answer to this question, too. These people are coming to her. In every city are tens of thousands of them. She needs these people. They need her. Will it be a leveling down process for Canada or a leveling up process for them? Before the nineties the average number of inhabitants per house in urban Canada was three. By 1901 the average was up to four. By 1911 it was up to five. In the crowded centers as many as twenty a room have been found. If this sort of thing continue and increase, Socialism will become a factor in Canada. It will become a factor because every man or woman who has not had a fair chance has a right to demand a change to a system that will give a fair chance. Canada's economic stability and freedom from social unrest will depend on getting her foreign denizens out to the land. Unfortunately high tariff fosters factory; and factory fosters cheap foreign labor; and cheap foreign labor as inevitably leads to social ferment as heat sours milk.
What part does religion play in Canada? In marked distinction to the United Kingdom and the United States, Canada is a church-going nation. You hear a great deal of the orthodoxy of the Britisher; but if you go to England and go to his church, even to a festal service such as Christmas, you will find that he leaves the orthodoxy mostly to the clergy and the women. I have again and again seen the pews of the most famous churches in England with barely a scattering of auditors in them. Of churches where the hard-working manual toiler may be found side by side with the cultured and the idle and the leisured—there is none. You also hear a great deal about the heterodoxy of the American; but if you go to his church—with the exception of the Catholic—you find that he, too, is leaving his heterodoxy to the clergy and the women. A few years ago it was almost impossible to gain entrance to a metropolitan church in the United States, where the preacher happened to be a man of ability or fame. Try it to-day! Though church music has been improved almost to the excellence of oratorios or grand opera, unless it be a festal service like Easter or Christmas, the pews are only sparsely filled. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say this is as true of the country districts as of the city. All through New England are countless country churches that have had to be permanently closed for lack of attendance. But between the churches of the United Kingdom and the United States is a marked difference—it is the air of the preacher. The Englishman is positively sublime in his unconsciousness of the fact that he had lost a grip of his people. The American knows and does not blink the fact and is frantically endeavoring by social service, by popular lectures, by music, by current topics, by vehement eloquence to regain the grip of his people; and it must cut a live manly man to the quick to know that his best efforts on salvation are too often expended on dear old saintly ladies, who could not be damned if they tried.
Now the curious thing about Canada, which I don't attempt in the least to explain, is this: whether the preacher pules, or whines, or moons, or shouts to the rafters, or is gifted with the eloquence to touch "the quick and the dead"; whether the music be a symphony or a dolorous horror of discords; whether there be social service or old-fashioned theology; whether, in fact, the preacher be some raw ignorant stripling from the theological seminary, or a man of divine inspiration and power—whatever is or is not, if the church is a church, from Halifax to Vancouver, you find it full. I have no explanation of this fact. I set it down. Canadians are a vigorously virile people in their church-going. They do it with all their might. I sometimes think that the church does for Canada what music does for continental nations, what dollar-chasing and amusement do for the American nation—opens that great emotional outlet for the play of spiritual powers and idealization, which we must all have if we would rise above the gin-horse haltered to the wheel of toil. "The Happy Warrior" in Watts' picture dreamed of the spirit face above him in his sleep. So may Canada dream in her tireless urgent business of nation-making; and religion may visualize that dream through the church.
Understand—the Canadian is no more religious than the American or the Britisher. He drinks as much whisky as they do light wines and beer. He "cusses" in the same unholy vernacular, only more vigorously. He strikes back as quickly. He hits as hard. He gives his enemy one cheek and then the other, and then both feet and fists; but the Canadian goes to church. One of the most amazing sights of the new frontier cities is to see a church debouching of a Sunday night. The people come out in black floods. In one foreign church in Winnipeg is a membership of four thousand. I think of a little industrial city of Ontario where there is a church—one of three—with a larger membership than any single church in the city of New York.
Canadians not only go to church but they dig down in their pockets for the church. In little frontier cities of the West more is being spent on magnificent temples of worship than has been spent on some European cathedrals. Granted the effects are sometimes garish and squarish and dollar-loud. This is not an age when artisans spend a lifetime carving a single door or a single facade; but when a little place—of say seventeen thousand people—spends one hundred thousand dollars on a church, somebody has laid down the cash; and the Canadian is not a man who spends his cash for no worth. That cash represents something for which he cares almightily in Canadian life. What is it? Frankly I do not know, but I think it is that the church visualizes Canada's ideal in a vision. We love and lose and reach forward to the last. Where? We toil and strive and attain. To what end? Our successes fail, and our failures succeed. Why? And love lights the daily path. But where to? Religion helps to visualize the answers to those questions for Canada.
Another characteristic about religion in Canada, which is very remarkable in an era of decadence in belief, is that the church is a man's job. Unless in some of the little semi-deserted hamlets in the far East, you will find in Canada churches as many men as women. In the West you will find more men than women. The church is not relegated to "the dear sisters." Shoulder to shoulder men and women carry the burden joyfully together, which, perhaps, accounts for the support the church receives from young men. An episode concerning "the dear sisters" will long be remembered of one synod in Montreal. A poor little English curate had come out as a missionary to the Indians of the Northwest. Such misfits are pitiable, as well as laughable. When you consider that in some of these northern parishes a man can reach his different missions only by canoe or dog-train, that the missions are forty miles apart, that the canoe must run rapids and the dog-train dare blizzards—an effeminate type of man is more of a tragedy than a comedy. I think of one mission where the circuit is four hundred miles and the distance to railroad, doctor, post-office, fifty-five miles. This little curate had had a hard time, though his mission was an easy one. When his turn came to report, his face resembled the reflection on an inverted teaspoon. Hardship had taken all the bounce and laugh and joy and rebound out of him. The other frontier missionaries grew restless as he spoke. One magnificent specimen, who had been a gambler in his unregenerate days, began to shuffle uneasily. When the little curate whined about the vices of the Indians, this big frontier missionary pulled off his coat. (He explained to me that it was "a hot night"; besides it "made him mad to hear the poor Indians damned for their vices, when white men, who passed as gentlemen, had more.") Finally, when the little curate appealed to "the dear sisters to raise money to build a fence," the big man could stand it no longer. He ripped his collar loose and sprang to his feet. "Man," he thundered, "pull off your coat and build your own fence and don't trouble the Lord about such trifles. I'm rich on thirty dollars a year. When I need more, I sell a steer. Don't let us bother God-Almighty with such unmanly puling and whining," and much more, he said—which I have told elsewhere—which brought that audience to life with the shocks of a galvanic battery. One of the most successful Indian missionaries in Canada is a full blood Cree. It does not detract from his services in the least that if in the middle of his prayers he hears the wild geese coming in spring, he bangs the Holy Book shut and shouts for the congregation to grab their guns and get a shot.
The virile note in religious life is one of the chief reasons for its support in Canada; and I have been amused to watch English and American friends who have gone to Canada first indifferent to the church-going habit, then touched and finally caught in the current. Does the habit react on public life? Undoubtedly and most strongly! Catholic Quebec and Protestant Ontario for years literally dictated provincial and federal policies; but, with the shift of the balance of power from East to West, that shuffling of Catholic against Protestant and vice versa has ceased in Canadian politics; and those newspapers that gained their support playing on religious prejudice have had to sell and begin with a new sheet. At the same time no policy could be put forward in Canada, no man could stay in public life against the voice of the different churches. If it were not invidious, examples could be given of public men relegated to private life because they violated the principles for which the church stands. The church in Canada is not a dead issue. It is not the city of refuge for the failures and the misfits. It voices the ideals of Canadian men and women busy nation-building. It has been cynically said that the church in England, as far as public men are concerned, lays all its emphasis on the Eighth Commandment, and none at all on the Seventh; and that the church in the United States lays all its emphasis on the Seventh Commandment and none at all on the Eighth. I do not think a politician could be a special acrobat with either of these Commandments and stay in public life in Canada. The clergy would "peel off" those coats and roll up their sleeves and get into the fight. There would be a lot of mud-slinging; but the culprit would go—as not a few have gone in recent years.
Deeply grounded, then, so deeply that the Canadian is unconscious of it, put the belief in the economic principle of vested rights! Still more deeply grounded, put a belief in religious ideals as a working hypothesis! Does any other factor enter deeply in Canadians' every-day living? Yes—next to economic beliefs and religious beliefs, I should put love of outdoor sport as a prime factor in determining Canadian character.
Professional sport has comparatively little place in Canada, though professional baseball has gained a firm foothold in the Northwest, where the American influence is strong, while the International League reaches over the boundary in the East. But it is the amateur who enjoys most favor. If a picked team of bank clerks and office hands and young mechanics in Winnipeg practises up in hockey and comes down from Winnipeg and licks the life out of a team in Montreal or Ottawa, or gets licked, the whole population goes hockey mad. This churchly nation will gamble itself blue in the face with bets and run up gate receipts to send a professional home sick to bed, and I have known of employers forgiving youngsters who bet and lost six months' salary in advance. Montreal will cheer Winnipeg just as wildly when Winnipeg wins in Montreal, as Winnipeg will cheer Montreal when Montreal wins in Winnipeg. It is not the winning. It is the playing of clean good sport that elicits the applause. The same of curling, of football, of cricket, of rowing, of canoeing, of snowshoeing, of yachting, of skeeing, of running. When an Indian won the Marathon, he was lionized almost to his undoing. When hardest frost used to come, I knew a dear old university professor, who would have considered it sin to touch the ace of spades, who used to hie him down to the rink with "bessom" and "stane" and there curl on the ice till his toes almost froze on his feet; and one Episcopal clergyman used to have hard work holding back hot words of youthful habit on the golf links; and his people loved him both because he golfed and because he almost said things, when he golfed. They would rather have a clergyman who golfed and knew "a cuss word" when he saw it, than a saint who couldn't wield a club and might faint at such words as golf elicits.
In one of Canada's best rowing crews, a millionaire merchant was the acting captain of the crew and among his men were a printer, an insurance canvasser, a bank clerk, a clerk in a dry goods store. In one of the most famous hockey teams was a bicycle repairer. Sport in Canada, as in the United States, is the most absolute democracy. I can think of no man in Canada who has attained a permanently good place in social life through catering to women's favor with dandified mannerisms, though not a few have got a leg up to come most terrible croppers; but I do think of many men to whom all doors are permanently open because they are such clean first-rate sportsmen. Until the last ten years of opulent fevered prosperity came to the Dominion, Canada might have been described as a nation of athletes. This does not mean that Canada neglected work for play. It means that she worked so robustly because she had developed strength on the field of play. Three truths are almost axiomatic about nations and sport. It is said that a nation is as it spends its leisure; that nations only win battles as their boys have played in their youth; that man's work is only boy's sport full grown. The religious little catechist may win prizes in the parochial school; but if he doesn't learn to take kicks and give them good and hard, in play, he will not win life's prizes. Fair play, nerve, poise, agility, act that jumps with thought, the robust fronting of life's challenge—these are learned far more on the toboggan slide where you may break your neck, in a snowshoe scamper, than poring over books, or in a parlor. I do not know that Canada has analyzed it out, but she lives it. Young Canada may be bumptious, raw, crude. Time tones these things down; but she is not tired before she has begun the race. She is not nerve-collapsed and peeved and insincere.
As to why Canada has no distinctive and great literature—I confess frankly I do not know. England had only Canada's population when a Shakespeare and a Milton rose like stars above the world. Scotland and Ireland both have a smaller population than Canada, and their ballads are sung all over the world. Canada has had a multitude of sweet singers pipe the joys of youth, but as life broadened and deepened their songs did not reach to the deeps and the heights. Something arrested development. They did not go on. Why? It may be that literature rises only as high as its fountain springs—the people; and that the people of Canada have not yet realized themselves clearly enough to recognize or give articulation to a national literature. It may be that Canada is living her literature rather than writing it. If Scott had not found appreciation for his articulation of Scottish life and history in poems and novels, he would not have gone on. In fact, when Byron eclipsed Scott in public favor as a poet, Scott stopped writing poetry. It may be that Canada has not become sufficiently unified—cemented in blood and suffering—to appreciate a literature that distinctively interprets her life and history. It may be that she has been swamped by the alien literature of alien lands, for the writers of English to-day are legion. Or it may be the deeper cause beneath the dearth of world literature just now—lack of that peace, that joyous calm, that repose of soul and freedom from distraction, that permits a creator to give of his best.
One sometimes hears Canadians—particularly in England—accused of crudity in speech. I confess I like the crudities, the rawness, the colloquialisms. They smack of the new life in a new land. I should be sorry if Canadians ever began to Latinize their sentences, to "can" their speech and pickle it in the vinegar pedantry of the peeved study-chair critic. Because it is a land of mountain pines and cataracts and wild winds, I would have their speech smack always of their soil; and I would bewail the day that Canadians began to measure their phrases to suit the yard stick of some starveling pedant in a writer's attic, who had never been nearer reality than his own starvation. I can see no superiority in the Englishman's colloquialisms of "runnin'," "playin'," "goin'," to the Canadian's "cut it out," "get out," "beat it." One is the slovenliness of languor. The other is the rawness of vigor.
When one comes to consider woman in a nation's life, it is always a little provoking to find "woman" and "divorce" coupled together; for there never was a divorce without a man involved as well as a woman. The marriage tie is not easily dissolved in Canada. Divorce pleas must go before a committee of the Federal Senate. Without legal fees, it costs five hundred dollars to obtain a divorce in Canada; with fees, one thousand dollars; so that Canada's divorce record is 1,530 for 7,800,000 of population in 1913; or one divorce for every 5,000 people. This seems a laudably low record, and Canada takes great credit to herself for it. I am not sure she should, for her system makes divorce a luxury available only to the rich. Divorce is not a cause. It is a result. I am not sure that people ill-mated do not do more harm to their children staying together than separating; and marriage is not for the man or the woman, but for the race. This opinion, however, would be considered heresy in Canada, and a great many factors conspire to help woman's status in the Dominion. To begin with, there are half a million more men than women. A woman need never give herself so cheaply as to spend her life paying for her precipitancy. She is not a superfluous. Another point in which some other countries could emulate Canada is in the protection of women and children. A woman ill-mated has the same protection under the law as though she were single. Infringement of her rights is punishable with penalties varying from seven years and the lash to death. A man living on a woman's illicit earnings is not coddled by ward heelers and let off with light bail, as in certain notorious California cases. He is given the lash and seven years. Such offenders seldom come up for sentence twice.
On the other hand, compared to punishments for property violations, the protection of women and children is ridiculously inadequate. A man abducting a girl is liable to sentence of five years; a man stealing a cow, to sentence of fourteen years. Counterfeiting coin is punished by life imprisonment. Misusing a ward or employee is punished by two years' imprisonment. This remissness is no index to a subordinate position by women in Canada. It is rather simple testimony to the fact that before the influx of alien peoples certain types of crime were unknown.
There is little of sex unrest in Canada. In fact, sex as sex is not in evidence, which is a symptom of wholesome relationships. Perhaps I should say there is little of that feminine discontent and revolt so strident in older lands. This I attribute to two facts: an overplus of men, and boundless opportunity and freedom for the expenditure of unused energies. In certain sections of England, women over-balanced men before the war as ten to one. What the over-balance will be after the war, one can only guess. When women who want to marry are not married, or married to types different from themselves—which must happen when the sexes are in disproportion—unhappiness must result. Woman is at war, she knows not with what. When women who are full of energy and ability have nothing to do, there is bound to be unhappiness. In Canada a woman has perfect freedom to do anything she chooses. Her opportunity is limited only by her own personality. What she wills, she may, if she can. If she can't, then her quarrel must be with self, not with life. Children can not choose their parents; but a woman can choose the parent of her child; and when her choice is high and wide and happy, it bodes better for the race than when conditions have forced her into an alliance that must be more or less of an armed truce on a low plane.
As an example of the fairness of marriage laws in Canada, if a fur-trader marry an Indian woman—according to the custom of the tribe, simply taking her to wife without ceremony, she is his legal heir, and her children are his legal heirs. This was established in a famous trial in the courts of Quebec. A trader became contractor and politician. When prosperity came, he discarded his Indian wife and married an English girl. On his death the Indian wife and children sued for his estate. It was awarded to them by the courts and established a precedent that guaranteed social status to the children of such unions. This is one of the things that easterners can not comprehend. I have never heard the opprobrious phrase "squaw man" used on the Canadian frontier; and descendants of the MacKenzies, the Isbisters, the Hardistys, the Strathconas, the Macleans, the MacLeods—blush, not with shame but pride, in acknowledging the Indian strain of blood.
The fact that some of the western provinces notoriously ignore a woman's property rights in her husband's estate—is sometimes quoted to prove the unfairness of Canada's laws to women. I am no defender of those lax property laws. They ought to, and will soon, be changed; but let us give even the devil his dues; and the devil in this case was the mad real estate speculation. When thousands of adventurers poured in from everywhere and began buying and selling and reselling property, it impeded quick turn overs to reserve the absent wife's third. Sometimes, as in the case of a famous actor, the wives numbered four. Ordinarily in Canada—certainly in eastern provinces—a third is the wife's reserve unless she sign it away. How four wives could each have a third was a poser for the speculator and the knot was cut by ignoring the wife's claims. Now that the fevered mad mania of speculation is over this remissness of the law in two provinces will doubtless be remedied.
You can ascribe the different characteristics of different nations to the topography of their native land—up to a certain point only. Beyond that the difference becomes one of psychology and soul rather than geography, and that is why nations hold to a large extent their destiny in their own hands. Undoubtedly the unfenced illimitable reaches of the prairie have reacted on the human soul, unshackling it from the discouragements of failure in the past and have given a sense of freedom that explains the dauntless optimism of the West; but if the people who went to the West had not had the courage to face the hardships of the pioneer, their optimism could not have triumphed over difficulties. The very qualities that sent pioneers forth on the trail to the setting sun guaranteed their success as empire builders.
Japan was long an island empire, but it was only when the soul of that empire awakened to the Western Renaissance that Japan became a world power. The German people existed on the map many centuries before they came into existence as a nation. It was only when the national idea came that Germany became a power. Likewise of England as mistress of the seas—the source of her commerce and wealth. England had been a seagirt nation from the beginning of time. It was only when by the defeat of the Armada England learned what mastery of the sea meant that she shot into front rank as a great world power.
How does all this bear on Canada? It is a puzzling question. Ask the average Canadian why the development of Canada has been slow; and he denies that it has been slow; or he proves that it is a good thing it has been slow; or he compares Canada's progress with that of some other country which has gone too fast, or too slow. All this is a mere clever dodging of fact. Blinking one's eyes to a fact doesn't eliminate the fact.
What are the facts?
De Monts' first charter to Arcadia dates 1605. The first charter for Virginia plantations comes in 1606, and the first New England charter dates the same year. The United States and Canada are both fertile. They have almost the same area in square miles. One has a population of over ninety millions and a foreign commerce of four billions. The other has a population of about eight millions and a foreign commerce of one billion. One raises from seven hundred to nine hundred million bushels of wheat; the other, from two hundred to three hundred millions. One produces thirty million metric tons of steel a year; the other, less than a million tons; one is worth a hundred and fifty billion dollars, the other perhaps ten billions.
It is explained that the northern belt of Canada lying in a semi-arctic zone should hardly be included in comparisons with the area of the United States lying altogether in a temperate zone; but if cultivation is proving one thing more than another, it is that Canada's arctic region recedes a little every year, and her isothermal lines run a little farther north every year. To put it differently, it is being yearly more and more proved that the degree of northern latitude matters less in vegetable growth than heretofore thought, if the arable land be there; for the simple reason that twenty hours of sunlight from May to September force as rapid a growth as twelve to fifteen hours' sunlight from March to September, and the product grown in the North may be superior to that grown farther south. Wheat from Manitoba is better than wheat from Georgia. Apples from Niagara have a quality not found in apples—say from the Gulf states. All things will not grow in northern latitudes. You can't raise corn. You can't raise peaches. I doubt if any apple will ever be found suitable for the northwestern prairie. At any rate, it has not yet been found.
Half a century ago the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in perfectly good faith testified before a committee of the Imperial Commons that farming could never be carried on in Rupert's Land, or what are now known as Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. He proved that grain could not be grown there. I recall the day when the idea of fall wheat west of Lake Superior elicited a hoot of derision. I have lived to wander through fields of six hundred acres north of the Saskatchewan. Thirty years ago any one suggesting settlement on Peace River, or at Athabasca, would have been regarded as a visionary fool. Yet wheat is ground into flour on Peace River, and the settler is at Athabasca; and soft Kansas fall wheat sent to Peace River has by a few years' transplanting been transformed into Number One Hard spring wheat. Canada's arctic belt has shrunk a little each year, and her isothermal lines gone a little farther north. The only limit to growth in the North Country is the nature of the soil. I am not, of course, speaking of the Arctic slope, but I am of the great belt of wild land north of Saskatchewan River. And where the arable land stops, the great fur farm of the world begins—-a fur farm which may change but can never be exhausted. Of course, Canada has a great northern belt of land that is not arable, but in that belt are such precious minerals as were discovered in the Yukon. Land that can't be plowed isn't necessarily waste land, and Canada's great northern belt is partly balanced by the desert belt of the Southwest in the United States—the perpetual Indian land of Uncle Sam.
With this argument—you come back just where you began. The two countries were first settled almost contemporaneously. Their area is not far different. They are both fertile. Each has great belts—having spent months in each belt, I hesitate to call them barren—of land that can not be plowed. Why has one country progressed with such marvelous rapidity; and the other progressed in fits and starts and stops? Why did a million and a half Canadians—or one-fourth the native population—leave Canada for the United States? The Canadian retort always is—for the same reason that two million Americans have left the United States for Canada—to better their position. But the point is—why was it these million and a half Canadians found better opportunities in the United States than in Canada? Opportunities knock at every man's door if he has ears to hear, but they are usually supposed to knock loudest and oftenest in the new land. It is a truism that there are ten chances on the frontier for a man to rise compared to one in the city. One can understand American settlers thronging to Canada. They have used and made good the opportunities in their own land. Now they are sending their sons to a land of more opportunities. The Iowa farmer who has succeeded on his three hundred and twenty acres sends forth his sons each to succeed on his one hundred and sixty acres in Canada; or he sells his own land for one hundred dollars an acre and forthwith buys a thousand acres in Canada. When the farmers of Ontario flocked to Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota and the two Dakotas, their land was worth thirty per cent. less than when they bought it. To-day that same land is worth one hundred per cent. more than for what they sold it.
It is easy to look over another land and diagnose its ills. Any Canadian will acknowledge that Ireland's population dropped from 8,500,000 in 1850 to 4,400,000 in 1908 solely owing to mismanagement, if not gross misgovernment; but he will not acknowledge that his own country lost a million and a half people from the same cause. Ireland lost her population at the rate of one hundred thousand a year for forty years, and that lost population helped to build up some of the greatest cities in the United States. The Irish vote is to-day a dominant power solely owing to that population lost to Ireland. It is no exaggeration to say that from 1880 to 1890 Canada lost her population to the United States at a higher rate than one hundred thousand a year. Why?
Go back a little in history! The most pugnacious United Empire Loyalist that ever trekked from the American colonies to Ontario and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would hardly deny that Canada was grossly misgoverned under the French régime. Laborers were forced to work unpaid on fortifications, on roads, on governors' palaces. The farmer was taxed to death in tithes to the seignior. Shipping was confined to French vessels owned by royal favorites. Fishing was permitted only under a license. The fur trade was a corrupt monopoly held by a closed ring round the Royal Intendant. New France was so mis-governed that the sons of the best families took to the woods and thePays d'en Haut—to which fact we owe the exploration of three-quarters of the continent.
And the most pugnacious Loyalist will hardly deny that under the British régime from 1759 to Durham's Report in 1840 the mismanagement was almost as gross as the misgovernment under the French. If any one entertain doubts on that score, let him look up the record on grants of thousands of acres to favorites of the Family Compact; on peculations of public funds in Quebec by irresponsible executives; on mistrials of disorders in the Fur Country, when North-Wester and Hudson's Bay traders cut each other's throats; on the constant bicker and bark between Protestant Ontario and Catholic Quebec, which kept the country rent by religious dissensions when men should have been empire-building.
Set down the cause of Canada's slow progress up to 1840 to misgovernment. Durham's Report remedied all that; and confederation followed in 1867. Was Canada's progress as swift after 1867 as it ought to have been? Examine a few figures:
In 1790 the United States population was four millions.
In 1800 the United States population was five millions.
In 1914 the United States population was ninety-eight millions.
In 1891 Canada's population was five millions.
In 1900 Canada's population was five million three hundred thousand.
In 1914 Canada's population was seven million eight hundred thousand.
In point of population Canada is just one hundred years behind the United States. Why? Granted her foreign trade is one-fourth as great as that of the United States. How is it that a people with such a genius for success in foreign trade have been so dilatory in their work of nation-building? Slow progress can no longer be ascribed to misgovernment. Her system of justice is one of the most perfect in the world. Her parliamentary representation could hardly be more complete. No people has stricter bit and rein on executive ministers. Through an anguish of travail Canada has worked out an excellent system of self-government. Why is her progress still slow?
Of course one reason for her slow progress in the past was the impression that long prevailed regarding Canada's climate and agricultural possibilities. The officials of the Hudson's Bay Company contended that the Northwest was unfit for settlement, and it was only within recent times that the contrary view gained a hearing and proved to be true. With vast tracts of unoccupied land in the milder climate of the United States still open to settlement and with Canadians themselves denying that the great Northwest could be cultivated, it is not strange that most immigrants passed Canada by. Furthermore in those days the glamour of democracy fascinated dissatisfied Europeans who swarmed to the New World. Canada was practically as free as the United States, but she was a possession of the British Crown, and many emigrants, especially from the Emerald Isle, preferred to try the experiment of living in a republic.
But there are other reasons. It was after the Civil War that the American high tariff struck Canada an unintended but nevertheless staggering blow. She had no market. She had to build up transportation system and trade routes, but this was well under way by 1890. Has her progress since 1890 kept pace with the United States? One has but to compare the population between the Mississippi and Seattle with the population between Red River and Vancouver to have the answer to this question.
Is it something in the soul; a habit of discouragement; of marking time; of fighting shy on the defensive instead of jumping into the aggressive; of self-derogation; of criticism instead of construction; of foreshortened vision? A diagnosis can be made from symptoms. I set down a few of the symptoms. There may be many more, and the thinker must trace up—a surgeon would "guess"—his own diagnosis.
If it were not such a tiresome task, it could be shown from actual quotations that there is not a paper published in Canada that at some time during the year does not deliver itself of sentiments regarding the United States which may be paraphrased thus: "We thank God we are not as Thou art!" Now the point may be well taken; and Canada should be thankful to God (and keep her powder dry) that crimes are punished, that innocence is protected, that vice is not a factor in civic government; but it is a dangerous attitude for any people to assume toward another nation. It does not turn the soul-searchings in on self. It does not get down beneath the skin of things; down, for instance, beneath a hide of self-righteousness to meanness or nobility of motive. A big ship always has barnacles; the United States is a big ship, and she keeps her engine going and her speed up and in the main her prow headed to a big destiny. It ill becomes a little ship to bark out—but let it be left unsaid!
While this curious assumption of superiority exists internationally, there is the most contradictory depreciation nationally. "We," they say, "are only a little people." So was Switzerland. So was Greece. So was Belgium. So, indeed, were the Jews.