to everything that lies at the roots of individual political life. They have prevailed decisively against contiguity, against commercial intercourse, social intercourse, literary intercourse, against a considerable interchange of population. Those who know best the passions which control the popular mind in Canada are fixed in the belief that the retention of a political individuality independent of the United States has become the touchstone of Canadian national honour. To understand why this is so we must recall and account for one primary fact, remarkable enough in itself and probably unique in history. We can easily understand that it requires no very marked natural boundary to form the line of division between nations which differ in language, religion, and descent, as in the case of European states. But in America we see that an almost purely artificial line of division has for more than a century been drawn across the breadth of a continent, and between two peoples who speak the same language, study the same literature, and are without any decisive distinctions of religious creed. There has been a great drawing together between the United States and Canada, as between England and Canada, during the last twenty-five years, but it is no greater in the one case than the other, and proceeds on social and literary, not on political lines. Evidently there {127} is in addition to the geographical line some fundamental principle or fact which separates the two countries. The same profound national convulsion which gave birth to the United States gave birth to the real life of Canada as well. As much principle and as much self-sacrifice were involved in the act of the Loyalists who gave to British Canada its peculiar character as in the struggles of the Revolutionists who founded the American Union. For what he believed a great principle, the Revolutionist broke down an old loyalty, cut his ties with the past, and engaged in the battle for independence. The Loyalist, on the other hand, with an abiding faith in the institutions of his mother-land, not to be shaken by the single mistake of a king, a minister, or a parliament, elected to stand by the losing side, to depend upon constitutional agitation to secure the full political liberty he too desired, and so sacrificed his all to retain his connection with the past, and came to Canada. No victory that Britain ever won by land or sea is more worthy to be blazoned on the pages' of her history than the loyal devotion of that great body of men and women, who, refusing to abjure their ancient allegiance, after the Revolutionary war, gave up their homes, their professions, and all that made life comfortable, crossed over into what was then a forest wilderness, and built up those Canadian provinces which have since grown into a great British confederation. {128}