I lately heard a representative American writer and thinker in England say that in his judgment the Irish question was becoming a more disturbing factor in American politics and a more difficult one to deal with, than it has been for Great Britain. Of the value of this sincerely held opinion an outsider cannot perhaps form a just estimate, but we know that a split in Tammany may practically decide a Presidential election, and a Canadian may fairly think that any problem of race or creed with which he has to deal is not more perplexing. There still remains the race issue in the South. The war of Secession settled the slavery question: it left the negro question as a dead weight upon the future. Thoughtful Americans themselves are among the first to confess that they have not yet seriously attempted to grapple with it. In the first outburst {136} of generosity, or as a move in the game of party politics, the franchise was given along with liberty, and the result no one as yet foresees. Clearly the country has to face the prospect of a steadily consolidating zone of black population stretching far across the continent. Should the Dominion be annexed to the United States all the voting weight of Canada within the union would for a generation to come scarcely balance this single negro element of America's population, supposing that, in accordance with Canadian ideas of political justice, the negroes should be allowed (as they are not now) to exercise their legal right. The violence and insecurity of life which have marked the settlement of the West, and still prevail over whole States in the South, are unknown in Canada. People ask why lynch law, as little known in new British countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as it is in Britain itself, is still a common phenomenon in the administration of American justice. Canada has managed a large Indian population with little serious difficulty; her neighbours during the same years have been engaged in a series of wars of extermination, apparently the outcome for the most part of maladministration in Indian affairs. The confusion of marriage and divorce laws throughout the various states has become a serious evil, for which no remedy has yet been devised. If Canadians have sometimes to wrestle with political corruption, they at least do so resolutely and {137} effectively, while there is a widespread belief that among their neighbours it is a permanent and accepted factor in party government. These points are not dwelt upon in a spirit of petty criticism, but it seems fair to mention them as facts which influence powerfully Canadian judgment in forming an opinion on the comparative merits of the political systems which they see working side by side.