Читать книгу Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7 - Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke - Страница 14

The position of Canada is in many ways anomalous: of the two chief sections of our race—that in Britain and that in America—the latter is again split in twain, and one division governed from across the Atlantic. For such government there is no pretext, except the wishes of the governed, who gain by the connection men for their defense, and the opportunity of gratifying their spite for their neighbors at our expense. Those who ask why a connection so one-sided, so opposed to the best interests of our race, should be suffered to continue, are answered, now that the argument of “prestige” is given up, that the Canadians are loyal, and that they hate the Americans, to whom, were it not for us, they must inevitably fall. That the Canadians hate the Americans can be no reason why we should spend blood and treasure in protecting them against the consequences of their hate. The world should have passed the time when local dislikes can be suffered to affect our policy toward the other sections of our race; but even were it otherwise, it is hard to see how twelve thousand British troops, or a royal standard hoisted at Ottawa, can protect a frontier of two thousand miles in length from a nation of five and thirty millions. Canada, perhaps, can defend herself, but we most certainly cannot defend her; we provoke much more than we assist.

As for Canadian “loyalty,” it appears to consist merely of hatred toward America, for while we were fighting China and conquering Japan, that we might spread free trade, our loyal colonists of Canada set upon our goods protective duties of 20 per cent, which they have now in some degree removed, only that they may get into their hands the smuggling trade carried on in breach of the laws of our ally, their neighbor. We might, at least, fairly insist that the connection should cease, unless Canada will entirely remove her duties.

At bottom, it would seem as though no one gained by the retention of our hold on Canada. Were she independent, her borders would never again be wasted by Fenian hordes, and she would escape the terrible danger of being the battle-field in which European quarrels are fought out. Canada once republican, the Monroe doctrine would be satisfied, and its most violent partisans would cease to advocate the adoption of other than moral means to merge her territories in the Union. An independent Canada would not long delay the railway across the continent to Puget Sound, which a British bureau calls impossible. England would be relieved from the fear of a certain defeat by America in the event of war—a fear always harmful, even when war seems most unlikely; relieved, too, from the cost of such panics as those of 1861 and 1866.

Did Canada stand alone, no offense that she could give America would be likely to unite all sections of that country in an attempt to conquer her; while, on the other hand, such an attempt would be resisted to the death by an armed and brave people, four millions strong. As it is, any offense toward America committed by our agents, at any place or time, or arising out of the continual changes of policy and of ministry in Great Britain, united to the standing offense of maintaining the monarchical principle in North America, will bring upon unhappy Canada the whole American nation, indignant in some cause, just, or seeming just, and to be met by a people deceived into putting their trust in a few regiments of British troops, sufficient at the most to hold Quebec, and to be backed by reinforcements which could never come in time, did public opinion in Great Britain so much as permit their sailing. In all history there is nothing stranger than the narrowness of mind that has led us to see in Canada a piece of England, and in America a hostile country. There are more sons of British subjects in America than in Canada, by far; and the American looks upon the old country with a pride that cannot be shared by a man who looks to her to pay his soldiers.

The independence of Canada would put an immediate end to much of the American jealousy of Great Britain—a consideration which of itself should outweigh any claim to protection which the Canadians can have on us. The position which we have to set before us in our external dealings is, that we are no more fellow-countrymen of the Canadians than of the Americans of the North or West.

The capital of the new dominion is to be Ottawa, known as “Hole in the Woods” among the friends of Toronto and Montreal, and once called Bytown. It consists of the huge Parliament-house, the government printing-office, some houseless wildernesses meant for streets, and the hotel where the members of the legislature “board.” Such was the senatorial throng at the moment of my visit, that we were thrust into a detached building made of half-inch planks, with wide openings between the boards; and as the French Canadian members were excited about the resignation of Mr. Galt, indescribable chattering and bawling filled the house.

The view from the Parliament-house is even more thoroughly Canadian than that from the terrace at Quebec—a view of a land of rapids, of pine forests, and of lumberers’ homes, full of character, but somewhat bleak and dreary; even on the hottest summer‘s day, it tells of winter storms past and to come. On the far left are the island-filled reaches of the Upper Ottawa; nearer, the roaring Chaudière Falls, a mile across—a mile of walls of water, of sudden shoots, of jets, of spray. From the “caldron” itself, into which we can hardly see, rises a column of rainbow-tinted mist, backed by distant ranges and black woods, now fast falling before the settler‘s axe. Below you is the river, swift, and covered with cream-like foam; on the right, a gorge—the mouth of the Rideau Canal.

When surveyed from the fittest points, the Chaudière is but little behind Niagara; but it may be doubted whether in any fall there is that which can be called sublimity. Natural causes are too evident; water, rushing to find its level, falls from a ledge of rock. How different from a storm upon the coast, or from a September sunset, where the natural causes are so remote that you can bring yourself almost to see the immediate hand of God! It is excusable in Americans, who have no sea-coast worthy of the name, to talk of Niagara as the perfection of the sublime; but it is strange that a people who have Birling Gap and Bantry Bay should allow themselves to be led by such a cry.

Niagara has one beauty in which it is unapproached by the great Chaudière: the awesome slowness with which the deep-green flood, in the center of the Horseshoe Fall, rolls rather than plunges into the gulf.