united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks amongst them like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

Permit me, sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the Deputies sent to the Congress were Lawyers. But all who read (and most do read), endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the Law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to

obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the State, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the Colonies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, So far shalt thou go, and no farther. Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and

Algiers, which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you are in yours. She complies too; she submits; she watches times. This is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire.

Then, sir, from these six capital sources; of Descent; of Form of Government; of Religion in the Northern Provinces ; of Manners in the Southern; of Education; of the Remoteness of Situation from the First Mover of Government; from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your Colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

E. BURKE.

CANADIAN LOYALTY.

[A speech delivered by Lord Dufferin at a banquet given to him by the Toronto Club, on his return from a tour through Western Canada, September 2, 1874.]

GENTLEMEN,-I cannot but consider it a very happy circumstance that one of the most gratifying progresses ever made by a representative of the Queen through any portion of the British Empire should find its appropriate close in this cordial. and splendid reception, at the hands of a society of gentlemen which, though non-political in its corporate character, is so thoroughly representative of all that is most distinguished in the various schools of political thought in Canada. It is but a few short weeks since I left Toronto, and yet I question whether many born Canadians have ever seen or learned

more of the western half of the Dominion than I have during that brief period. Memory itself scarcely suffices to reflect the shifting vision of mountain, wood and water, inland seas and silver rolling rivers, golden corn-lands and busy prosperous towns, through which we have held our way; but though the mind's eye fail ever again to readjust the dazzling panorama, as long as life endures not a single echo of the universal greeting with which we have been welcomed will be hushed within our hearts. Yet deeply as I am sensible of the personal kindnesses of which I have been the recipient, proud as I feel of the honour done to my office, moved as I have been by the devoted affection shown for our Queen and for our common country, no one is more aware than myself, of the imperfect return I have made to the generous enthusiasm which has been evoked. If, then, gentlemen, I now fail to respond in suitable terms to the toast you have drunk, if in my hurried replies to the innumerable addresses with which I have been honoured, an occasional indiscreet or ill-considered phrase should have escaped my lips, I know that your kindness will supply my shortcomings-that naught will be set down to malice-and that an indulgent construction will be put upon my hasty sentences.

But, gentlemen, though the language of gratitude may fail, the theme itself supplies me with that of congratulation; for never has the head of any Government passed through a land so replete with contentment in the present, so pregnant with promise in the future. From the northern forest borderlands whose primeval recesses are being pierced and indented by the rough and ready cultivation of the freegrant settler, to the trim enclosures and wheat-laden townships that smile along the lakes-from the orchards of Niagara to the hunting-grounds of Nepigon-in the wigwam of the Indian, in the homestead of the farmer, in the workshop of the artisan, in the office of his employer, everywhere have I learned that the people are satisfied-satisfied with their own individual prospects, and with the prospects of