fully alive to the part played by religion in the development of nationhood and civilisation. The churches catch the immigrants, especially the bright young fellows and young women who are settling in the Dominion. They are not only spiritual hearths, but they are social centres, and nothing is more needful than social centres of the right kind in a new country with a rapidly flowing-in population. It is in the churches that the ideals are held up and kept alive which will save Canadian nationality from being materialised in its cradle. There is a possibility that the very richness of the resources of Canada, the variety and greatness of the opportunities it presents for getting on in the material sense, may lead to a coarsening of the national fibre which would prejudice the whole future of Canada. Canadians must be made to realise that a nation, like an individual, “lives not by bread alone,” that it has a soul to be saved as well as a body to be fed. Canada must be preserved from the national tragedy of growing to be a giant in bulk with the strength of a giant—but a giant without a soul. * * * * * CHAPTER III THE MAKING OF MODERN CANADA Though Canada, as a country explored and occupied by white men, is more than three centuries old, it is only within the last half century that its possibilities have begun to be realised even by its own settlers. There are reasons to explain this tardy awakening to the significance of the country. During the French occupation, which was decided on that dark night of 1759 when Wolfe’s army scaled the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and sent its crashing volleys into the regiments of Montcalm, Canada was as badly governed as any dependency of a Western nation has ever been. So far from encouraging colonisation and laying the foundation of a French nation on American soil, the French Government of Canada did everything, both positively and negatively, to strangle the child in its cradle. The France of Louis XV. especially did worse than neglect Canada. It sent to Quebec and Montreal men who were not merely incompetent, but who ruthlessly pillaged the Canadians by every legal and illegal means. The story told by Parkman and other recent historians who have examined the contemporary historical material of the way in which, with the connivance of the Quebec Government, the people were almost flayed alive by the malpractices of agents and contractors, is unparalleled in the history of wholesale robbery and corruption. The Verres of Cicero’s impeachment was a heaven-sent benefactor of the Sicilians compared with the Canadian Intendant of Finances, Bigot. The Canadian farmers had not only no encouragement to wring its riches from the soil, but they were punished for their success. They were made to pay over and over and over again for everything that was necessary to