LORD DUFFERIN IN CANADA.
IT is not difficult, as one reads Lord Dufferin'a latest speech —a speech to the Militia of Montreal, delivered on the Queen's birthday—to understand why he has been the most popular Governor-General who ever ruled in Canada, the man who, if the Dominion wished to elect a constitutional King, would have the greatest chance. Lord Dufferin succeeds just where most Englishmen fail,—he sympathises with the inner aspirations, with the pride, and even with the foibles of the people over whom he is called to preside. The Canadians, loyal as they are to the Empire, have still a strong wish to be a people, to become a nation, to be recognised by the world as Canadians, with something distinctive and admirable about them, and Lord Dufferin never makes a speech without grati- fying that feeling to the full. He has not the faintest desire to keep them down, to make them feel dependent, or to sacrifice the individuality of Canada to the glory of the mother-country. On the contrary, on the Queen's birthday, while exulting in their loyalty and recapitulating its proofs, Lord Dufferin tells the Canadians :—" You are no longer colonists or provincials. You are the defenders and guardians of half a continent,—of a land of unbounded promise and predestinated renown. That .thought alone should make men and soldiers of you all. Life would scarcely be worth living, unless it gave us something for the sake of which it was worth while to die. Outside our domestic circle there are not many things that come up to that standard of value. But one of these you possess,—a country of your own ; and never should a Canadian forget, no matter what his station in life, what his origin or special environments, that in this broad Dominion he has that which it is worth while both to live for and to die for." The Canadians are displaying more than any other colonists of Great Britain the military taste and spirit. Though not pressed, like the colonists of the Capes by ever present danger, they are interested in military affairs; they have organised a fine colonial army, which has been brought up to a remarkable point of efficiency ; and they alone, among the Colonies, have offered material assistance to the Empire in external war. They feel a justifiable pride in this spirit, and receive the Governor-General's warm acknowledgment of it with a natural but even passionate exultation. No passage in the recent speech called forth louder cheers than that in which Lord Dufferin confirmed the reports that entire regiments of Canadians had volunteered for service, if war broke out in. the East. "Almost every post has brought either to me, or to the Prime Minister, or to the Minister of Militia, the most enthu- siastic offers to serve in the Queen's armies abroad, in the event of foreign war. These offers have represented not merely the enthusiasm of individuals, but of whole regiments and brigades of men."
The Canadians, like the people of the United States, are slightly vain of the size of their country, desire that it should be known for what it is,—a great and rich portion of the earth's surface ; and Lord Dufferin recently made them a speech in which the geographical grandeur of the Dominion was described in terms of almost lyric fervour, and with an admiration from which men in Europe, unaccustomed to asso- ciate size with greatness, feel a slight instinctive recoil. He has, in fact, spoken from his high place as if he were a Canadian himself, till his audiences have felt that his sympathy with them was perfect, and he himself entitled in return to the warm affection which, if not loyalty, is its best substitute. these great communities, with their universal suffrage, their strong democratic instincts, and their deficiency in a history of which to be tranquilly proud. Their rulers need the power to wake up emotions which make them feel great in their own SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH appears to be of one mind eyes, emotions which educated Englishmen, with the centuries L.7 with Dr. Johnson, who was very indignant with Mrs. behind them, seldom need, and still more seldom heartily Thrale, when he was staying with her, if she allowed him, as approve. We may not hereafter be without that necessity even he said, 4C to descend to a vacuity," i.e., to a breakfast-room at home, as the suffrage is gradually widened down till the where no hostess was. He thinks the Cabinet, now that its majority know little or nothing of the past. Mr. Grant Duff leading minds are away, can better spare the presence of wrote the other day that in the leader of an English party another leading mind, and prefers busy canvassing in Glou- there must, for the future, be something of poetry, and we cestershire to deliberations with the forlorn ten in Downing seem to see in Lord Dufferin's wonderful success in Canada a Street. We do not know that he is wrong. We dare say confirmation of that far-sighted remark. Lord Dufferin owes there is something insipid in consultations the results of which much there to his capacities and something to his experience, must, as everybody knows, be referred to the Duke expectant in but vie question if the Sheridan strain in his blood, which has Berlin, before they can take much effect. But while descanting given him imagination and sympathy, has not done for him on the merits of the Tory Government, he would do well more than all, to be a little more frank and a little more accurate. If he One point of great political importance comes out in the had limited himself to the popular success which the tawdry Canadian history of the past five years, and especially in the foreign policy and the empty home policy of Lord Beaconsfield relation of the Canadian people with Lord Dufferin. The have gained, we should quite agree with him. We have again federation of English Colonies does not diminish, but distinctly and again pointed out that the policy of Tory democracy has increases their loyalty to the mother-State. One would have so far been singularly successful, and that while it remains imagined, reasoning only a priori, that with each step which successful, there is nothing for its opponents to do but to sub- a colonial people took towards nationality, their jealousy of the mit, and to endeavour to convince the electors that its success prestige, and the authority, and the interference of the is not very creditable to their shrewdness and sagacity. But mother-country would become deeper, until at last even the it is a different thing when Sir Michael Beach goes on to appearance of any control, any superiority, would be resented claim for the Tory Government, on the one hand, that it has as an affront. One would have expected that the desire for a solved the Foreign-Policy-problem in the anti-Russian sense of separate foreign policy, for a status apart in the great world, Lord Beaconsfield's public professions, and next, that its chief and for careers without a limit, would have been the first to be shortcoming in home policy has been due to the financial developed in a young and vigorous nationality. So far, how- burdens contracted by the previous Government, and left for ever, is this from being the case, that federation seems to the present Government to discharge. On both these points soothe Colonial susceptibilities. The greatness of a Dominion, as Sir Michael Beach speaks as if his head were turned by compared with a Colony, satisfies more ambitions than it excites. popular success. But when it appears, as it seems almost Ever since the confederation of the Canadas, the Canadian jeal- certain that it will appear, that the only success gained ousy of Great Britain has perceptibly declined, and the popular by England in foreign policy is one which could have feeling for the Viceroy, as the link with the mother-country been achieved far sooner, and far more cheaply, without has perceptibly increased, till opinion in Canada contrasts any, or at all events without anything like the same, effusion quite strangely with opinion, say, at the Cape. It is impos- of blood, if England had but acted before the war in a sense sible to read the history of the recent Ministerial changes in precisely opposite to that which Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet Cape Colony without seeing that the desire to carry on war took up, will the éclat of a great moral victory be any longer cheaply was not, as the Times imagines, the only motive of accorded to him ? And when the expenditure grows heavier Mr. Molteno and his party in desiring that all military and heavier, and the money's worth less and less, will the éclat authority should be left to them, and the Queen's troops of lavishness remain withdrawn. There was also a bitter jealousy of British authority, If we understand anything of the signs of the times, a dislike of the representative of this country, not as Sir Bartle Lord Beaconsfield is going to acquiesce now, with much Frere, but as a foreign authority, a wish to go their own boasting, of a diplomatic victory over Russia, in a policy way, in indifference to the rights and even to the interests of decidedly more drastic towards Turkey than would have the whole Empire,—feelings which had before come out very satisfied Russia herself a year ago, if England had then joined strongly in the discussions on Lord Carnarvon's plan for con- Russia in enforcing it. If that be a great official success, we federation. The Government was, in fact, swayed by a small should like to know the meaning of a great official failure. Sir spirit of localism which blinded its members not only to Michael Hicks-Beach is himself aware that something of the the interests of South Africa, but of what was possible under kind will be charged on the Government. He admitted in his the relation of the Empire to the Colony. They actually asked speech on Wednesday that the war had so greatly changed the that the Queen should cease to command her own forces, and conditions of the problem, that concessions must now be made the link between the Colony and the British Government be to which, before the war, Great Britain had been totally reduced to an empty form. That is the very spirit which opposed, and yet he condemned most bitterly the Russian federation has charmed away in Canada, and which it Government for undertaking the war which was, according to would probably charm away in South Africa, for the body of his own admission, essential for those concessions. He praised Whites support Sir Bartle Frere, and before the dispute arose Lord Beaconsfield for steadily declining to insist on any had expressed their approval of federation. Of course, the reform of Turkey before the war, indulged in warm invectives temper of the Canadians and that of the South Africans is not against Russia for going to war, and yet took credit to Lord It is here that the Englishman so constantly fails, while the the same. There is something of the Scotch self-satisfied temper Irishman so frequently succeeds. The Englishman governs about Canadians, which makes them less susceptible than the well, but is disliked ; while the Irishman, often less successful South Africans, who have caught from the Dutch something as an administrator, binds the people to him by a fervid recog- of the bitter suspiciousness and irritability natural to men nition of their qualities, which, by a natural movement of ruled by an alien Government ; but a minute localism has gratitude, they then attribute to him. Lord Dufferin is a much to do with it also. The South Africans are never likely successful ruler ; he has met and overcome the difficulties to be oppressed, though oppression was tried once, in the which at first beset a federal State made up of jealous pro- matter of the convicts ; but they think or fancy they might vinces ; he has met and has overcome the difficulties arising be, or at least are as irritable as if they did, and consequently from the presence of a single mighty neighbour on a frontier regard every act of the Home Government with a distrust too long for defence ; and he has met and overcome the which sometimes becomes perverse. The people of the difficulties in the way of creating effective force in a State Dominion are not afraid of being oppressed, because they with enormous areas, without the possibility of compulsory know they cannot be, and consequently they judge English military service, and without the wealth to expend on action as men judge the actions of friends and comrades, not a voluntary, but regular, military force. These are great forgetting their own interests, but not suspicious and not successes, but even if they had not been achieved, Lord irritable. After all, friendship is strongest between equals, Dufferin, if he had still spoken as he does speak, and sym- and it is towards equality between Britain and her great off- pathised as he does sympathise, would have quitted the shoots that the policy of confederation tends. When it is Dominion with the cordial liking of every Canadian. Ability next tried on a great scale, we can only hope, but do not is much, and kindness is more, and justice is most of all ; but expect, that a man with the gifts of Lord Dufferin may be something else is required in the men who are selected to guide the first or second Viceroy.
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