If the difficulties with the United States which have arisen on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are not settled amicably and justly, it will not be from any want of willingness on the part of British people or Canadians. Britain and Canada agreed to a settlement of the St Lawrence Fishery Question which an American Democratic President and Cabinet accepted as fair. A Republican Senate rejected it as a move in the party {185} game, and has preferred to leave it open ever since. Any reader of the correspondence in the Behring Sea Question can judge for himself on which side was the spirit of conciliation and compromise. Only in the last resort did Lord Salisbury utter the warning words which seem to have done more than anything else to prepare the way for fair adjudication upon the points at issue. How curiously and completely Mr. Smith is out of touch and sympathy with the organizing movements of the British world: how oddly inconsistent he can be even while pressing his own theories, one or two further illustrations will suffice to show. Apparently he looks upon Australian Federation as a step in the wrong direction. 'We cannot help once more warning the Australians that Federation under the Elective system involves not merely the union of the several states under a central government with powers superior to them all; but the creation of Federal parties with all the faction, demagogism, and corruption which party conflicts involve over a new field and on a vastly extended scale. It is surprising how little this obvious and momentous consideration appears to be present to the minds of statesmen when the question of Federation is discussed[4].' Warnings like this are repeated. Anxious as he seems to be for the unification of the American continent by the absorption of Canada into the United States, Mr. Smith would apparently urge Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland to avoid even the example of Canadian {186} confederation in gaining for themselves effective unity, although he knows, that for them confederation means the freedom of the continental market and the same breaking down of tariff walls which is the one supreme bribe he has to offer to Canadians in exchange for the surrender of their nationality. Another turn of the intellectual wheel and even American unification is forgotten in a new ideal of disintegration. 'There is no reason why Ontario should not be a nation if she were minded to be one. Her territory is compact. Her population is already as large as that of Denmark, and likely to be a good deal larger, probably as large as that of Switzerland; and it is sufficiently homogeneous if she can only repress French encroachment on her eastern border. She would have no access to the sea: no more has Switzerland, Hungary, or Servia ... The same thing might have been said with regard to the maritime Provinces--supposing them to have formed a legislative union--Quebec, British Columbia, or the North West.