lute that makes the words British Imperial Federation anything but a fascinating strain to great masses of voters in Canada and Australia. Evidence accumulates that they do not dance when we pipe this tune to them. For the truth is that they are dominated, rightly or wrongly, by three main ideas—the sovereignty of their own people, the importance of their own industrial development, and the determination not to meddle with the affairs of other people. The example of the United States of America is very potent with them, and in this sense it is true that American ideas hold the field in the New World. ideas may ultimately prove to be not wise, but unwise inadequate at any rate for the development of a higher life in a great people. Anyhow, we may be certain that, like all ideas of all times, they are not permanent but transitory, merely steps in the procession of ideas. Meantime, however, they appeal to "the masses," to the average minds, and therein lies their present force.

These

America's strong points are easily seen, her weak points are more difficult to discern and keep in view; but her negro question, her

silver question, her very size, the unprecedentedly rapid growth of wealth (with all the peculiar temptations and degradations that quickly acquired wealth carries in its train), and the absence of a high national ideal, present their own peculiar difficulties. With her enterprising spirit and boundless resources, however, she may still be the first to arrive at a more systematic reconstruction of the social fabric than has yet been attempted; but, until she does so, her power of repelling one class of minds will be almost as great as her power of attracting another class. The cultured classes of the Old World will find more to enjoy and to admire in any corner of their own countries than in the choicest spots of the New World, but it is otherwise with those who have been the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. To them the New World is in many respects the ideal world; and in these days, when the voice of the majority is so widely recognised as the voice of God, we need not be surprised-although it may be a rude awakening-to find that Canada and the United States of Australasia will presently follow in the way that the United States of

America have led, because they imagine it to be the way of peace-the way that seems best to assure to themselves the undisturbed enjoyment of their industries, the precious possession of their individuality and the natural principle of their growth. And just as there cannot be true patriotism in the United States, in Canada, or in Australia without perpetual loyal recognition of the root from which they have all sprung - from which they have derived their language and their laws, their literature and their religion-so there cannot be true patriotism in England without proper consideration for the best interests of all the offspring; and in whatever way they see fit to work out their own future (by separation or otherwise), we shall be better occupied in strengthening our alliances and our fellowship with the whole 75,000,000 of them, in unifying the sentiment of all the English-speaking peoples, rather than in attempting a partial British Imperial Federation which, with its heterogeneous elements, can never really be welded into a homogeneous structure, because it does not represent any natural principle of

growth. Even if a scheme could be evolved capable of being practically worked (and none has yet been formulated worthy of serious consideration), it would always remain a highly artificial contrivance, and would end probably in satisfying no one.

ON THE EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS

IN AMERICA.1

EVERY one who has directed particular attention to the United States has no doubt already heard enough, and perhaps too much, of their everlasting "unprecedented material progress"; for it is an unpleasant characteristic of the less agreeable kind of Americans, that they are very apt to ram their prosperity down one's throat.

There is a story of a Yankee persistently adopting this mode of treatment to a dear, irascible British Tory of the old school, till the latter, exasperated beyond endurance, snarled out, "It's a thousand pities, sir, that Christopher Columbus ever discovered your d―d country.

1 Fraser's Magazine, June 1873.