I am satisfied that this argument alone is quite sufficient to make annexation to the United States a moral impossibility for the Canadian people. They may join heartily in every process by which their mother-land and the great republic are drawn more closely together; they may even be in no small degree the link which binds them together in friendly feeling. But to expose themselves to the possibility of hostile {139} conflict with that mother-land for the sake of a temporary commercial advantage or from motives of cowardice would make them incur the contempt of the people they leave and the contempt of the people they join. In the long run it may be taken for granted that the path of commercial and every other prosperity will be found along the path of national honour. That national honour is looked upon as the issue at stake there can be no reasonable doubt. In considering more closely the question of commercial advantage it may in the outset be remarked that no truly noble individual life, much less any truly noble national life, was ever yet built up on principles and purposes entirely mercenary. The landmarks in history to which the human heart everywhere turns with a thrill of instinctive pride are the periods when nations have forgotten, for a time, self-interest and the love of gain, and in the glow of patriotic enthusiasm have made great sacrifices from motives of principle, affection, honour, and loyalty, British Canada owes its foundation to such an outburst of lofty spirit. The United States themselves were founded, as a nation, upon what seemed at the time an utter defiance of commercial advantage, and the heroic periods of that country, as of every other, the periods which gave birth to all that is noblest and purest in it, were not the times of its wealth and luxury, but the times of its self-denial, suffering, effort, and sacrifice. Prosperity must be an incident of noble national life; not the sole foundation on which it is built. {140}