A CANADIAN VIEW OF ANNEXATION

Prompted by a knowledge of our kinship, and sustained by the evidences of intimate commercial relationship, is the desire for the union of Canada and the United States; but I am wholly deceived if the general growth of national confidence and ambition in Canada is not firmly antagonistic to a change in that direction. Bitter political struggles we have, and in the controversies of opposing parties statements are made which are misunderstood to imply a lack of confidence in the present and future of our country. It is true, too, that the administration of governmental affairs over a country so vast in extent has imposed on our people no inconsiderable burden. The development of our resources, and the construction of needed public works, has entailed an outlay of money which five millions of people cannot feel rests lightly upon them; but it is wrong to draw the conclusions which Dr. Prosper Bender, of Boston, Massachuetts, has so forcibly set forth in his contributions to the Magazine of American History. The weight of debt and taxation is borne cheerfully, and on a fair comparison it is found to be lighter than any country similarly situated, and certainly no heavier than that of the United States. Less than six dollars per head of the population is not excessive taxation. Going deeper, however, than this, the forces which make up a vigorous civilization are felt to be strong, and with all the privileges which the American system of government presents, we feel that there is here an absence of that license in certain directions which it tolerates. I need not particularize. Surpassing these reasons, however, is the array of evidences of our material progress, so forcible and unmistakable, as to prevent even the suspicion that disintegration may begin. To present the more important of these in brief form will suffice. A railway running from ocean to ocean has been built within the past five years, and on both sides of that great band of iron are to be found the evidences of business activity and progress. Within seven years, $350,000,000 have been placed in fixed capital, and for the five years ending with 1885 an annual average sum of $10,585,196 has been invested under the provision of the Joint Stock Companies Act, in addition to the millions of which no accurate record is available. No other years before them stand out so prominently for commercial enterprise. The people have prospered. While industrial investments have multiplied, the lesson taught by the record of the savings banks is, that the working classes are rapidly rising in the scale of comfort and means. At the time of Confederation (1867), the deposits in savings banks of all kinds in Canada aggre

gated but $4,687,166; while at the close of last year they had reached $57,678,258. In the decennial period ending with 1881, the census returns show that the amount of capital invested in manufactories increased from $77,694,020 to $165,302,623, and the number of employees from 187,942 to 254,935. We have $600,000,000 of paid-up capital in railways, and there are 10,300 miles of road in operation. This represents vast increases since Confederation. Our foreign trade, which stood at $131,027,532 in 1868, has averaged $212,300,315 for the past five years, and there is no reasonable cause for thinking the maximum has been reached. There are, rather, inspiring indications that the favorable attention of capitalists is being turned to Canada, as a field for investments. We have, for instance, our phosphate mines near this city, opened and worked by Americans, and in other avenues of trade the stimulation of foreign capital is distinctly felt. Then, too, the fact that the desirable free lands of the United States. have been taken up, and immigration thither is declining, gives strong hopes for our excellent North-west and British Columbia as the basin into which must flow great currents of moving population. We see, also, that at the rate their forests are disappearing, the people of the United States, before a generation has passed, must become our customers for inestimable quantities of timber.

I need not go further. Enough must have been said to show the ground upon which our people, among whom an increasing Canadian spirit is found, base their opposition to any movement looking toward annexation. Added to this is the knowledge of rapidly accumulating social comforts. Although it seems but yesterday that our fathers hewed their homes out of the primeval forest, there are already felt the influences of associations which attract and endear us to the land which we call our country and the spot we call our home. One other influence must be acknowledged. In the burning of that old spirit found in Byron's lines: 'Freedom's battle once begun

"

Descends from bleeding sire to son."

The memory of ancestral wrongs inspires a potent opposition on the part of many thousands to any other than a commercial alliance with our admirable and excellent neighbors to the southward.

OTTAWA, CANADA, June, 1886.

LOUIS XVI. AND MARIE ANTOINETTE

No history of America during the revolutionary and formative period of our Republic is complete without a clear analysis of the singular influence exerted over passing events by the king and queen of France, in gorgeous halls across the water. We are much more frequently reminded of the fact that the American struggle for independence helped to sow the whirlwind of discontent in France which swept away the king and queen, and even the throne itself, than that our own success in the war of the Revolution was made possible by the act of that same unhappy sovereign who paid the penalty for his good intentions with his life.

In the beginning of the summer of 1774, the same day that the Boston Port Bill went into effect suspending indefinitely the cheerful industry of that prosperous New England capital, Louis XVI., not quite twenty years old, and the still more youthful Marie Antoinette found themselves at the head of the French nation. They had already been married four years, and it is not to be supposed that either of the young wedded pair had given any too much time to the acquisition of wisdom. Reared in one of the most corrupt of courts, Louis XVI., strange as it may seem, had grown up temperate, honest, and moral: and never was queen more captivating than Marie Antoinette at eighteen. To the golden hair and the dazzling fairness of complexion of a northern beauty she united the grace and animation of the south; her eyes were a bright, penetrating blue, her face oval, her forehead high and clear, and the pride and sweetness of her smile illumined every feature, while the elegance and stateliness of her manners added immensely to her charms. The new king was not handHis face in profile, was on the contrary, extremely commonplace, a receding forehead, aquiline nose, and double chin, giving an expressionless effect. He blinked with his eyes and was painfully near-sighted. His figure was short and stout-inclined to corpulency—he waddled in his .walk, was awkward in style, untidy in dress save on state occasions, and was perpetually napping in his chair or carriage. One of his notable habits was to allow no interruption to his meals, and he partook of them after the manner of a starving man. Even on that terrible morning at Versailles, at the very instant when the mob was breaking down the doors of the royal palace, the king of France calmly ate his breakfast, fearing it might be

inconvenient to do so at a later hour. He was not, however, without many excellencies of heart and character. The legacy handed down to him through a succession of kings for eight hundred years was unfitness to govern a people who held virtue in no respect-who could only be ruled with an iron hand. He did not rival his royal ancestors in will-power, warlike achievements, or wickedness; but he had the glory of being surpassed by few if any of them in virtue. He was a king who would have been adored in peaceful times. He was generous, humane, and religious, though timid and irresolute. With his reign was ushered in the new right to criticise sovereigns. An intellectual revolution was the precursor of the

political revolution. The writers of the day were merciless in their attacks, and conversation ran in the same groove. The finances of France had been left in a desperate condition by Louis XV., and the disjointed state of public affairs, in every aspect, was the common talk of all. It wanted but a spark to ignite the flame. Louis XVI. was but little more than a boy, inexperienced, and uninstructed in affairs of state. He tried to ease the burdens that were weighing heavily upon the people, whom he really loved; and for a time he was greatly beloved in rcturn. Various reforms were projected, and the most offensive feudal services and imposts abolished in spite of the opposition of the courtiers, the nobility, and higher order of the clergy. The king set the example of economy by reducing his individual household expenses. But his ministers were failures; and his political instincts were dull. He could not discern whither he was drifting. Many an older and wiser man has been afflicted with similar blindness. The court appeared to be the real government of France; the king was harassed by the bitter contentions of political factions, and grew prematurely old. In the meantime and while the state was tottering on the verge of bankruptcy, Louis XVI. gave his cordial support to the American war, which added 1,500,000,000 livres to the irreparable deficit in the disordered finances of the nation. This was the pivot on which the fortunes of the king turned-the fiery spark that, smoldering for a time, exploded the volcano. A few months later hostilities were declared between France and Great Britain. For the worse than empty treasury of France the king saw, or thought he saw, two remedies-restriction of expenses, which the queen and the court opposed, and taxing the privileged class, which the Parliament opposed; he hoped to find a third expedient by appealing to the people, and unwittingly added fuel to the kindling fire.

Had Louis XVI. lived either before or after the French Revolution, he would have been appreciated. He liked books and solid books; he was a great student of geography, and his cabinet was hung with maps and charts of the whole world; he had a passion for mechanical works, and for whatever concerned commerce or the sea. He was industrious, quick of comprehension, and had a fine memory. His reading was well selected, and on historical matters he had written some before he ascended the throne, and was familiar with chronological details. He took great interest in the mechanical part of printing, and when twelve years old printed himself thirty-five copies of maximes moráles et politiques tirées de Télémaque, which he had collected from Fénélon's romance: and he made also a translation of some portions of Gibbon's Decline and Fall which was published under the name of Le Clerc de Sept Chênes. He excelled