The diffusion of the English race and the English language over the face of the globe is a result without a parallel. When Columbus and Cabot crossed the Atlantic the number of the English people equalled proximately half the present population of Canada. When Elizabeth ascended the throne it was about five millions. At the time of the American revolution the English population in the British Isles and in North America together numbered fifteen millions. The English-speaking population in all parts of the globe has now increased to a hundred millions, nearly equally divided between England, her Colonies and the United States. The progress and well-being of the world is largely dependent on the prosperity and harmony of this rapidly increasing branch of the human family. That any of its elements should disintegrate, or that antagonism should take the form of hostility, is painful even to contemplate. There are no signs of any such tendency. There is a natural affinity existing between the children of the one parentage, with substantially the same theories of human duty, with the like interests in the progress of art and science, by which our comforts are multiplied and human happiness increased. They enjoy equally free institutions, speak one language, with one literature, with common traditions, with a history one and the same for nearly the whole of the nineteen Christian centuries. The aims of the two great sections of the race are identical, and whatever political institutions in either case may prevail, it is an object worthy of the highest ambition of the most enlightened statesmen to bind these peoples in a perpetual alliance of union and friendship and common interest. We may look hopefully to the closer union of all countries where our language is spoken as a consummation to be desired in the general interest of mankind. In the meantime as Canadians and British subjects our first duty is the strengthening and consolidating of the State to which we owe allegiance. It is the peculiar privilege of Canada to make manifest her earnest desire to build up and uphold the Empire of which we are an integral part, an Empire without a parallel in the world’s history. INDEX. Acadia, 106. Acadians called on to take oath, 114; deportation of, 108, 115. Ainsworth, 361. Aix-la-Chapelle, peace of, 113. Albany, Duke of, 74. Alexander, Sir Wm., 105. Alexandra Steamer, 333. Aleyn Simon, Vicar of Bray, 77. American Bar, London, 74. Amherst, N. S., 16. American war, its unfortunate character, 437. Anne, Queen, her statue, Minehead Church, 82. Annapolis, 105; Stone inscription, 105 _n_. Argall, Capt. Samuel, 105. Argyle, Duke of, 36. Ashburton treaty, 125; its commercial effect, 126. Ashcroft, 315. Astoria, 342. Bad weather at sea, 91. Baker Mount, 357. Baptiste, 297; Guide up Eagle Pass, 302. Battle Creek, 235.