Now Canada cannot afford to have a

weak government. We flatter ourselves that we are a strong race, and that we do not, like the feebler races, stand in need of a ruler's paternal care. Probably there is reason in our boast. But this very strength, and the self-reliance which accompanies it, are apt to produce an intense individuality, and a want of regard for the interests of the community. This is sure to be especially the case among emigrants, who are only half attached to their new country, and each of whom has come, emphatically, to shift for himself, and to improve his own condition, with the memory, perhaps, of a community which was not very kind to him in his breast. One has only to walk about our streets to see how much people of this kind think of themselves, and how greatly they need good laws, firmly administered, to make them think of the rights and interests of others. Moreover, though we have not here those abuses of personal govvernment or class privilege which once justified in this country, and may still justify in England, the existence of a reform party, we have abuses of another kind. The administration of great cities, throughout this continent, may in fact be said to be one vast abuse; and with a party government looking for support to the ward politicians, or afraid to excite their enmity, there can be no prospect of reform. The course of the labour movement may also render necessary measures for the protection of liberty of contract, and the general rights of the community, against tyrannical interference; and the incidents of the late elections have shown what we have to expect from a party government in that direction. There is something typical of the present system in the aspect of the Parliament at Ottawa fiercely debating the Proton outrage, while the navigation of a noble river is being choked with slabs and sawdust, beneath

sit.

If Canada cannot afford to have a weak government, still less can she afford to have a bad one. Our union is not yet pro

perly cemented, and the attempt, for instance, of a reckless party leader to dragoon a great Province by buying up votes in the smaller Provinces, might rouse such resistance in the great Province as would lead to a very serious crisis. Geography is all against us, and we abound with sectional interests, local and commercial. Not only so, but our Confederation embraces two distinct nationalities, sharply contrasted in social and religious character, as well as differing in blood and language,-one a pioneer offset of the Anglo-Saxon race; the other a petrified remnant of the France before the Revolution. But yesterday the two nationalities were in conflict, and today the conflict is rather suppressed than extinct. The struggle between the races and the religions in Manitoba bore a sufficient analogy to that between the Slavery and Free-Soil parties in Kansas, which heralded the American civil war, to warn us that we cannot venture to let the Government, which should be the instrument of consolidation, be turned by the furious rivalries of faction into an instrument of disruption.

The subject of public works, again, at the present juncture, is one of exceptional importance, and, at the same time, of exceptional peril. If we allow the resources of a young country, and undertakings vital to its commercial prosperity, to become dice on the gambling table of party, fiscal disaster will follow, and perhaps bring Annexation in its train. Without pronouncing on the policy of the compact with Columbia, we may point to the magnitude of that transaction as a measure of the power of mischief which an unprincipled party leader might exercise in this direction.

On the other hand, if we can keep our

political institutions pure and sound, Canada will possess attractions, compared with her chief rivals on this Continent, which will give her a great advantage in the race.

The politicians who framed the constitution of the Dominion were, in many respects, highly qualified for their momentous task. They were men of undoubted ability; they had an adequate sense of the resources and hopes of Canada; they were thoroughly versed in provincial politics and in the details of provincial administration; they possessed the confidence of the country, and were in a position to secure the adoptions of their plans. But they had all, without exception, been trained in those party, and almost personal, conflicts, the pettiness of which Lord Elgin justly characterises as unfavourable to statesmanship of the broader kind. Their political information seems to have been confined to that which they had acquired in the limited sphere of their own practice. The day isprobably yet far distant when politics will assume the character of a science. But we have arrived at a period when general experience may greatly aid and qualify local experience in legislation of all kinds, and especially in framing constitutions. The civilized world, including the various British Colonies, has, during the last century, been the scene of a vast series of most pregnant experiments in the construction of governments on the elective principle, the results of which, when all due allowance has been made for peculiarities of national character and circumstances, are to a great extent applicable to the solution of similar problems in all civilized countries. Of knowledge of this kind, not a trace is to be seen in the speeches or writings of the framers of our Constitution. Beyond their local experience they seem to have had only two things present to their minds-the British Constitution, of which they took the conventional view stereotyped in Blackstone, which is widely at variance with actual facts, and the example of the American Union,

which they somewhat misconstrued, taking the Civil War to have been caused by the weakness of the Federal power, when, in fact, if there was any cause besides the social antagonism between Slavery and Free Labour, it was the apprehension of Federal interference with the local institutions of the Southern States. They do not seem even to have formed a distinct conception of the character and objects of Federal government, for they proclaim as their guiding principle a desire of reproducing the British Constitution, which is National, not Federal, and furnishes no model for a federation. Nor does it appear that they were clearly conscious of the fact that the Provinces were already federated under the British Crown, and the special functions of a Federal Government-that is to say, foreign relations and peace and war-already vested in the British Cabinet. One of their number has just told us that it was their great aim to make the Dominion Parliament the sole theatre of the party conflict, excluding it from the Provincial assemblies; if so, we must commend their benevolence at the expense of their forecast, more especially as they had the results of conclusive experience in the State legislatures of the Union at their very door. But they gave themselves little time to exercise forecast. They were eager to escape from the deadlock which the strife of their factions had brought about, and to avert the dangers which they erroneously imagined to be impending on the side of the United States. The speech of the Prime Minister, in proposing Confederation to the Legislature, is little more than an exhortation to haste.

Already we have reason to suspect that this narrowness of vision and haste combined have led to serious errors and omis sions. Our nominee Senate, an attempt to reproduce the House of Lords under social conditions hopelessly uncongenial, has few and faint defenders. The practical relations between the central and local legislatures have

evidently not been settled, and it is not easy to foresee how they will settle themselves. that the plan of the framers has, in this respect, miscarried, we have authoritative assurance. The terms of admission into the Confederation, which ought to have been regulated, as in the United States, on general principles of justice, independent of all party, have been left to be regulated in each particular instance by a party government, whose paramount object it is, and must always be, to attract the votes of the new province to its own side. An An equally calamitous error was committed in consigning, absolutely, to a party government and its partisan majority the expenditure on public works. Perhaps a similar remark may be made with regard to the taking of the census, on which the balance of political power is made to depend, and which ought, therefore, to have been placed, by the Constitution, in strictly impartial hands. No tribunal of any kind is provided for the repression of political corruption and malversation, in spite of the signal warning afforded by the example of the United States. No power is reserved to the nation of amending the Constitution so that if, for instance, the nominee Senate should persist in putting a veto on a reform affecting its own constitution, there would be no escape from the dilemma.* But the most palpable and the most fatal error of all was that which is here specially under consideration—the permanent infliction on Canada of the English system of party government, which, in a country where there are no dividing lines of principle, inevitably becomes a government of organized factions, constantly bidding against each other for power and patronage by demagogism, intrigue and corruption. The error was a pardonable one in legislators who knew no other system,

* It will be observed that none of these errors, if errors they be, are covered by the excuse which covers some other defects in the Constitution-the recalcitrant nationality of Quebec.

though they might have taken warning from the dead-lock of faction, which was the immediate cause of the Confederation movement. But it was most calamitous, and it is visibly bringing political ruin on the country. It cannot be said that this was the natural course, or the one which statesmen, not biassed by sinister training and misleading analogies, would have adopted in framing an elective government. The natural course was, fairly to carry into effect the elective principle, and, as the Parliament was to be elected by the nation, to vest the election of the Executive Council in the Parliament, with a reservation of the formal authority of the Crown, and with such securities for the preservation of harmony between the Executive and Legislature, and against one-sidedness in the former, as a proper rotation of elections and the minority clause would af ford. Such a government would neither be immaculate nor infallible; its members would often be elected on grounds far from the most satisfactory, and would themselves be far below the highest standard in point of ability and virtue. But as a body, it would at least be free from the present temptations to the practice of corruption. Holding power by a certain, though limited, tenure, it would have no inducement to buy support for the purpose of maintaining its own existence; under the operation of the minority clause it would embrace elements sufficiently independent of each other, and mutually watchful enough, to prevent it from acting, like a bad party cabinet, as a united gang in the prosecution of sinister designs. Its energy would not be diverted, by the constant struggle for selfpreservation, from the business of the country; it would have no need to quail before rings and sections; its traditions would be unbroken, and its policy would probably be stable. Finally, it might preserve a certain amount of dignity, as it would not be called upon to take the stump, to clasp hands with rowdyism, emulate it in ribaldry, or brawl with it on the hustings.

It is suggested that the abolition of party and its conflict would consign the political world to a miserable stagnation. Alas! close at hand is the Labour Question, and looming behind it, some of them not in a very remote distance, are other questions, the greatest that have ever stirred the mind of humanity, which itself was never before so sensitive or so liable to disturbance. There is little reason to fear that stagnation will be the lot of this or of the next generation, even though our political institutions should become instruments for the promotion of union and good will instead of firebrands of discord, and though, while we are solving the tremendous problems which beset life in all its aspects, we should be impartially and quietly governed.

To escape from a parliamentary deadlock, brought on by party, the leaders of party resorted to Confederation. Another deadlock has now been brought about by the same agency. The accounts given by the organs of the results of the late elections are extravagantly contradictory, and illustrate the influence of faction on the veracity of the press. But the fact is that, among

the members whose opinions are declared, the two parties are very evenly balanced. A solution cannot be found in another Confederation: Faction has no more worlds to conquer, except, perhaps, Prince Edward's Island. A majority, to carry on a Government, can be found only in the Provinces "where the party lines are not yet drawn." The majority so obtained will have to be kept up by the same means, and the country will be launched in a course of interminable corruption. The only alternative is to obtain from the Imperial Government leave to make use of the experience gained in this first session of our Dominion Parliament, by revising the Constitution, and so to alter the mode of selecting the Ministers of State, and forming the Cabinet, that the men whose rivalries are now distracting the country, and corrupting it to the very core, and neither section of whom can reasonably be expected to resign its pretensions, may be united in a Government entitled to the general support of the community, as an organ, not of faction or personal ambition, but of the public good.

a Parisian nor a Provincial-he is merely a traveller. He likes a joke and a song, sides apparently with all parties, but is quite patriotic on the whole. He is obliged to be an observer, or else give up his trade, for has he not to sound men by a single glance, to guess at their actions, their manners, above all their solvency; and not to lose his time, to make a rapid estimate