It is often no little of a benefit to each of us to pass through tribulation. Equally so with communities. The Mother Country in this struggle had much to unlearn before her possessions were wisely governed. It took nearly seventy years before the lesson bore fruit. But thoughtful men, step by step, won adherence to their sound policy. We have its result in the present prosperous condition of the Outer Empire, which now, apart from India, contains ten millions of the European race, little less than the population of the British Isles at the period of the American war. In the last century powerful antagonistic forces were in operation: religious disabilities, commercial restrictions, a narrow franchise, an imperfect parliamentary representation, unwise trade regulations. Discontent followed. It was the interference with the commerce of Massachusetts with the West Indies which was one of the first causes of the severance of good feeling, so soon to be transformed into bitterness and hate. That these grievances no longer exist and that the several British Provinces enjoy free institutions, which it is to be hoped they will learn wisely to work; all this dates from that terrible struggle. Probably the lesson was only the better remembered that it was taught in blood and suffering. No such repelling forces now exist. The causes of dissension have passed into oblivion. Commerce, science and increased intelligence have relieved the problem from the features which disfigured it. The Atlantic has ceased to be a cause of separation. It is a pertinent query, had these new conditions prevailed a century back, whether the Declaration of Independence would ever have been written. The American revolution divided the history of the English speaking race into two streams. What will be their future course? They cannot flow in opposite directions. Are there any influences which will lead them insensibly to gravitate one to the other, until in process of years the waters will blend? We may assert thus far, that however we may be unable to forecast the future, we can trace at this date an assimilation of thought in much, which a few years back could meet on no common ground. Such a result is visible on many occasions and in a thousand ways. In the words of Commodore Tattnall, who went to our rescue at the Pei-ho forts, “Blood is thicker than water.” On all sides the movement is convergent.