anon his little darts of sarcasm. Mr. Dorion, or out of the House as a fluent, argumentawho occupies the seat next him, immediate-tative speaker; and it is not difficult to see ly opposite Sir John Macdonald, speaks in his well-chosen expressions, and admirfluently in both French and English, and is always heard with interest, for his opponents recognise his keen logic and legal knowledge. The seat on his immediate right -the first on the row-was generally occupied by Mr. Sandfield Macdonald, but it was vacated by the inexorable mandate of Death, we all remember, only a few days previous to the prorogation, and now both friends and foes who had been long in the political arena with him bear willing testimony to his merits during a memorable public career, the record of which proves how any man, however humble his origin, can attain the highest position in the country by perse. verance, industry, and indomitable will. Sir Alexander Galt has occupied for two or three years a place analogous to that occupied by independent members in the British House of Commons. Possessing fluency of expression, a pleasing delivery, great knowledge of commercial and financial questions, he has necessarily obtained a large share of public attention in times gone by Latterly he has not taken the same interest in public matters-perhaps, he feels his position of antagonism to his old political allies, or is conscious that his enunciation of Independence views has for the present weakened him in the opinion of the people. And now it is said, apparently on good authority, that both he and Mr. Dorion intend retiring from the political arena. If this turn out to be the case, then Parliament will lose the services of two of its ablest men, whose opinions are valuable and deserving of consideration, even when opposed to the views of the majority. Mr. Macdougall, of North Lanark, also claims to be an independent member, but the debates of last session prove that there is no sympathy between him and the reformers led by Messrs. Mackenzie and Blake. Mr. Macdougall is not excelled by any of his political compeers in able arrangement of matter, the effects of long training on the press, which above all other professions is calculated to teach a man the value of terseness, and enable him to grasp in a moment the most salient points of a question. Besides these gentlemen, there are others to whom we cannot give more than a passing mention. Mr. Mills always has facts and arguments to present, and promises to be an influential man in the House of Commons; but at times he is too didactic, and his speeches-as Sir John Macdonald told him on one occasion during the session-are more suited to the pages of a periodical than to the floor of the House of Commons. Mr. James Young speaks clearly and pointedly. Mr. Cartwright, who has sat alongside of Sir Alexander Galt for some time, and occupies a somewhat similar position so far as the Government and the Opposition are concerned, is a good debater and is well versed in economical subjects. There was much doubt and anxiety throughout the Dominion, especially in Ontario, as to the actual operation and value of the Treaty of Washington, and the explanations of Sir John Macdonald before Parliament were eagerly awaited by the people of every province. When the afternoon arrived for these explanations, every seat was full, and the galleries were thronged to a very late hour at night with a deeply interested assemblage of spectators. These explanations are now a part of the history of Canada, and no one, whether political supporter or political opponent, will deny that they were given in a manner worthy of a Canadian statesman. Some may differ as to his premises and his conclusions, and doubt the wisdom of the reasons that influenced him to ask the House to support the measure; but none can hesitate to confess that his address is a master-piece of argument and com prehensiveness. It was delivered calmly and deliberately, though at times he burst from the trammels of explanation and argument and assailed his opponents for their prejudgment of his action in this great question. He carried the House with him most enthusiastically; if there were waverers in the ranks of his supporters they appeared then to have rallied around him. The great speech on the Opposition side of the House was confessedly that delivered by the Premier of Ontario. It occupied over four hours in the delivery, and was distinguished for its calm, deliberate expression of opinion. Mr. Blake seldom infuses into his speeches that fervour which is a characteristic of the addresses of Sir John Macdonald when he wishes to create an impression on the House; indeed, both socially and politically, he is said to want the warmth and cordiality of manner which make the Conservative leader so popular. In replying to the Premier, Mr. Blake no doubt felt the magnitude of the task imposed upon him by his political supporters, as a master of reasoning and argument, and made it his object to discuss the question with as much freedom from a partisan spirit as a man of strong political predilections could do. The reply, like the speech which drew it forth, was fully worthy of a man of so high a reputation as the member for West Durham possesses, and deserves a foremost place among the political records of this "new nationality." Mr. Blake, however, somewhat marred the effect of the delivery of his speech, by the lengthy quotations from the minutes of council and despatches of the Government, which were necessary to the elucidation of his argument. He laboured also under the disadvantage of feeling all the while that he was speaking to an audience which, so far as the great majority was concerned, did not sympathize with the opinions he was expressing. A public man may know that he is reflecting the sentiment of the country to a large extent; but the true orator likes to produce an immediate effect on those around him, and when he feels he is not in sympathy with them, he may fail to show that fire which otherwise would light up his speech from time to time as he saw that he was touching the hearts and convincing the minds of his hearers. The speech of Mr. John Hillyard Cameron was also one of the most characteristic delivered in the course of the most elaborate discussion that ever came off in the First Parliament. We should naturally expect an address of more than ordinary ability from so consummate a lawyer as the member for Peel; and it is admitted that never before did he display more forcibly the perfection of his legal and constitutional erudition-that his speech is one of the most valuable contributions to the technical and legal, as well as historical, views of the question, that the discussion in and out of Parliament has produced. We have no space to go into a review of the able speeches of the President of the Council, the Minister of Finance, Mr. Macdougall, Mr. Mackenzie, Mr. Anglin, Mr. Dorion, Sir George Cartier, Mr. E. Macdonald, and others, which the readers of the debates will recall to mind. It was well known, from the moment the Minister of Justice had concluded his elaborate speech, that the vote in favour of the ratification of the Treaty would be very large, and the different speakers from every section soon proved, as they had an opportunity of expressing their opinions, the feelings of the majority on the question. The maritime representatives, with remarkable unanimity, argued in favour of a Treaty which gave the people of their provinces a free market for one of their staple products, and held out the prospect of a still more liberal measure of reciprocity in the future. Representatives from Ontario were unwilling to oppose a measure so clearly in the interests of the provinces engaged in the fisheries, and considered the concession of the free navigation WE E have before us the first volume of Col. Gray's work on Confederation. of which the second title is "The Political and Parliamentary History of Canada, from the Conference at Quebec, in 1864, to the admission of British Columbia." Consisting in a large measure of documents, speeches and extracts, the book is universally greeted as "rather materials for history than history"-a description which is not likely to attract readers. It is, however, a useful work, and one which Col. Gray was in some respects well fitted to undertake. His style as a writer, like his style as a speaker, is a good parliamentary style, clear, compact and business-like. His opportunities of information have been first-rate. Indeed his position has in one sense been too high, and his acquaintance with the events and actors too intimate; for he is precluded by an honourable delicacy from ever taking us behind the scenes, and he is equally precluded from dealing with those less dignified features of the situation, which are not the least interesting or the least instructive to the political student. The questions raised by Col. Gray's work have an interest for all Canadians, even be 174 yond that which appears upon the surface. Our material resources, even when soberly and faithfully estimated, without the exaggeration of which there are specimens among the oratorical extracts contained in the present volume, are great, and sufficient to sustain an opulent and powerful nation, notwithstanding the geographical disadvantages which it would be childish to ignore. But, in her competition with the vast and compact empire to the south of her, Canada must rely to a considerable degree on the soundness of her institutions. The elective principle must now be recognized as having become the only possible basis of government, at all events upon this continent. But if we can so apply it as to guard against the special maladies to which, like the hereditary principle, it is subject, and which have been terribly developed in the United States; if we can hold at bay faction, and faction's universal concomitant, corruption; if we can keep down trading politicians and city thieves; if we can save our tariff and our public works from rings; if we can preserve the independence of our judiciary, and the security which an independent judiciary affords for prosperity and trade; if we can maintain on a decent level the morality of public life and the character of public men, Canada will have advantages and attractions of which she will soon feel the benefit in a material as well as in a moral point of view. The immediate causes of Canadian Confederation were clearly enough the deadlock in the Canadian Parliament, and the storm which appeared to be gathering on the side of the United States. But some measure for securing freedom of commercial intercourse between the Provinces had long been the obvious dictate of common sense. Perhaps in adopting a confederation rather than a legislative union, the Provinces were unconsciously obeying the general law of the Teutonic race, which in all its abodesGermany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Great Britain, the United States-will be found tending to federalism, either in the regular shape of a group of states combined under a federal government, or in that of two or more monarchies combined in the person of one sovereign but retaining in a greater or less degree their parliamentary independence and their local laws. The spirit of independence and self-reliance has been at once the strength and the weakness of the Teuton. The propensity to disunion by which it is accompanied has more than once been on the point of delivering the race, and political freedom with it, into the hands of the feeble, but, on that very account, more gregarious and united Celt. In the present instance, it is true, the aversion of a Celtic Province to a national union, and its preference for federalism, was a principal determining cause in favour of federation; but the exception is obviously one which proves the rule. It was to incorporation with English Provinces that the Lower Canadians objected. Had all the provinces been French, a legislative union would infallibly have been the result. Federalism would have met the fate which it met in the French Revolution, when nothing was a surer passport to the guillotine. The Provinces did not afford the happiest of subjects for the application of the federal principle. The happiest subject for the application of that principle is a pretty numerous group of states tolerably well balanced in point of size and power, such as the States of America or the Cantons of Switzerland. The great predominance of one or two states is adverse to the working of the principle, especially if the number of states is small. If there is one predominant state, the natural result is a combination of all the others against it; if there are two, the natural result is a rivalry between them, in which the smaller states will take part as allies of one side or the other, mak-ing their profit in the shape of grants and. other concessions out of the alliance. We must expect to encounter some difficulties from this source. The vicinity of the United States, while it was one of the maincauses of confederation, renders the discontent of the smaller provinces more dangerous, and enables them, if they should ever prove unreasonable in their demands, to imperil the harmony and even the existence of the Confederation. Had legislative union been practicable, its advantages would have been great. some danger that the second Federal Government having no very obvious functions of importance to discharge, would occupy itself to an undesirable extent in maintaining the ascendancy of the party by which it was supported, in the extension of its patronage for that purpose, and in the expenditure of money on public works and other undertakings by means of which its. partizans might be rewarded and its influence increased. In point of military security, it seems not clear that much was gained by Confederation. As was urged at the time by the opponents of the measure, the unity of military action among the Provinces, under a British Commander-in-chief, would probably be at least as great as under a party Government of the Dominion. By the statesmen and people of Great Britain Canadian Confederation was generally regarded at the time as the seal of Canadian nationality and the forerunner of Canadian Independence, though the perpetual changes of mood in the ill-informed and careless mind of the British public on the Colonial question render it difficult to appeal to the memory of yesterday. But to Canadian statesmen, who had no such object in view, the chief inducement appears to have been the hope of escaping from a Parliamentary dead-lock. Unhappily, while they dealt with the most obvious, they failed to deal with the deepest cause of the evil. The most obvious cause of the evil was the There was however another peculiarity in the position of these colonies, considered as a subject for the application of the federal principle, which, though at once of the highest importance and glaringly obvious, seems not to have attracted much attention. What are the special functions of a Federal Government ?—Peace and war, and the management of foreign relations. The exigencies of defensive war have in fact given birth to the most memorable confederations in history, from the Achæan League downwards. But these functions could not be assigned to the Federal Government of the Canadian Dominion, for the simple reason that they were already vested in the Government of the British Empire. The Provinces were in fact already members of a Confederation, the Imperial Government standing to them and the Colonies generally in the relation in which the Federal Government of the American Republic stands toward the States of the Union, and discharging for them analogous functions in the most important re-equilibrium of party forces and the impossispects. The advocates of Imperial Confederation are agitating for that which, if they could open their eyes, they would see already in existence, though a Pan-Britannic Parliament is still a vision of the future. To interpose another Federal Government between the Governments of the Provinces and that which already exercised federal power on their behalf was to introduce into politics a very curious and complicated machine. There might have seemed to be bility of forming a strong party Government, resulting from the ill-starred union of British with French Canada. The deepest cause of the evil was Faction; and Faction is not diminished or divested of its noxious properties by being set to operate over a larger area, with a greater breadth of passion to which to appeal and more extensive opportunities of corruption. In the special form of Federal Government which they adopted, the authors of |