It has been said that all great movements which affect the condition of peoples are originated and carried forward by the combination of two forces: the force of conviction, which comes from reason, and the force of enthusiasm, which is born of sentiment. It is generally supposed that Anglo-Saxon people are most strongly influenced by reason, by arguments directed to their intelligence. Yet it may be doubted if in any race, sentiment plays a more decisive part in {58} moulding public action. It lives in the pages of Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, Burns, Tennyson, and in distant lands loses none of its power to stir men's hearts. It has profoundly influenced Canadian history for more than a hundred years. It flames up in every colony when a crisis arises when British honour is at stake. Millions of people in distant parts of the world glory in the right to speak of England, Scotland, or Ireland under the tender name of home. A sentiment indeed, but a mighty power. It is true that the term 'loyalty,' as it has usually been applied to British colonies and colonists in their relations to the United Kingdom, is in some ways becoming an obsolete and unmeaning term. A larger loyalty which has in it no suspicion of dependence is taking its place. It is one which implies faithfulness to the great nationality to which we belong, its heart, indeed, and its greatest traditions in Britain, but its mighty limbs and no small share of its hopes for the future on the world's circumference. It is at the bar of this loyalty that the Briton at home as well as the Briton abroad must be judged. The sentiment on which it partly rests is one we need not fear to count upon, and it has its limits only with the British world. It has been proof against the defects of an illogical system: it will prove the main element of cohesion in a true system. But we need not fear to turn away entirely from sentiment to study the dry facts of material interest which each of the greater communities of the Empire has in National Unity. [1] _Britannic Confederation_, p. 54. [2] Since the above was written we have been called upon to lament the great loss which English literature has suffered in Mr. Freeman's death. I cannot but think that the critical attitude which he took towards British unity is explained by a remark which I have lately found in his _Impressions of the United States_. He says, 'Greatly to my ill-luck, I am wholly ignorant of all things bearing on commerce, manufactures, or agriculture.' Are not these the questions which really dominate British national development?