Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of the world, taking part in the carrying trade. Several great steam-ship lines cross the Atlantic, another connects the Pacific coast with Japan and China--a line is projected to Australasia--others carry on trade with the eastern and western coasts of America and with the West Indies. The instincts and conditions which have made British people a maritime and trading race are renewed in {144} the Dominion. Canada's interest is to retain the national connection which gives her commerce the best opportunities, her fleets the surest protection in all parts of the world. The Canadian shipmaster or trader knows that at ports all over the world, at Hong Kong and Calcutta, at Malta or Melbourne, at the Cape or Auckland, in a word, at all the great centres of the world's ocean commerce, he can claim the protection of the national flag, he has a right to apply to the British consul, he can rely on the prestige of the British name. These are rights of which the Canadian knows the value. They are rights which he is not likely to relinquish, for they have been honestly won, first by retaining his allegiance at the price of much sacrifice in the revolution of 1776, and then by steady persistence in that allegiance at all costs through more than a century. He knows they are rights that no other nation can give him in equal degree. It is in trade relations, however, that Canada's interest is supposed to look away from Great Britain or the rest of the Empire, and towards the United States. Twenty years ago the American Republic entered upon its policy of excluding as far as possible the products of other countries, and among them those of Canada, by a high protective tariff. That policy has been steadily maintained until it has reached a climax in the McKinley tariff. It had previously forced a protective policy upon Canada itself. It seems clear that the Dominion has suffered {145} to some extent commercially by this exclusion from the markets of her own continent, by the resolute determination of their neighbours that Canadians shall not, as Canadians, have any share in the prosperity of the United States. That she has gained in energy, self-reliance, and national purpose is equally clear to anyone who attempts to measure the splendid and successful efforts which she has since confederation and under this exclusion made at self-development. That the moral gain infinitely outweighs the commercial loss, I, for one, firmly believe. But there are those who argue that for the commercial advantage which it is anticipated would flow from union with the United States, the continental independence of the country, its historical traditions, its political institutions, its nationality, should be abandoned. In Great Britain itself there are found many who assume as a matter of course that commercial attraction will inevitably lead to the political absorption of the Dominion into the United States. I