IX - ENGLAND AND CANADA

Summary

TO THE EDITOR OF THE “DAILY NEWS.”

Sir,—Now is the crisis of this question. It must now be determined whether English statesmen will control events, or, as in a case fresh in terrible memory, “drift” upon their current to some disastrous issue. I ask your permission, then, to speak once more; and I ask it with more confidence, since my views have been supported in your columns by “Hochelaga,” who, looking from the side of Canada, while I look from the side of England, declares the present bond of political connexion between the two countries to be weak for good, and strong only for evil.

It is most true, of course, that my opinions are those of a student, not of a statesman. Compared with the opinions of a real statesman, the opinions of a student could have little value. They may have some value compared with those of political tacticians living from hand to mouth, or of journalists deserting their high task of guiding the public mind to traffic, like stockjobbers, in the passion of the hour. Mr. Rose, who speaks against my views in the Canadian Parliament, tells us that he turns gladly from the theories of philosophers and political economists to the responsible judgment of statesmen. How gladly would he have turned from the Colonial theories of Adam Smith, that “ingenious but dangerous speculator,” as he was called by the statesmen of his day, to the responsible judgments of Mr. Grenville and Lord North.