From Liverpool to Winnipeg, _via_ Hudson's Bay, the distance is less by eleven hundred miles than by way of the St. Lawrence. From Liverpool to China and Japan, _via_ the same northern route, the distance is--as a San Francisco journal points out--a thousand miles shorter than by any other trans-American line. It is really _two thousand miles_ shorter than _via_ San Francisco and New York. From James's Bay as a centre, the cities of Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton, London, and Winnipeg, are pretty nearly equidistant. How immense, then, will be the power which the possession of the Hudson's Bay, and of the railway route through to the Pacific, must confer upon Great Britain, so long as she holds it under her sole control. And where is the nation that can prevent her so holding it, while her fleets command the North Atlantic Ocean. Is it not utterly inconceivable, that English statesmen can be found so mad or so unpatriotic, as to throw away the very key of the world's commerce, by neglecting or surrendering British interests in the North-West; or that Manchester and Birmingham--Sheffield and Glasgow--should sustain for a moment any government that could dream of so doing. I firmly believe, in fine, that either by the St. Lawrence or the Hudson's Bay route, or both, British connexion with Canada is destined to endure, all prognostications to the contrary notwithstanding. England may afford to be shut out of the Suez canal, or the Panama canal, or the entire of her South African colonies, better than she can afford to part with the Dominion, and notably the Canadian North-West. If there be any two countries in the world whose interests are inseparable, they are the British Isles and North-Western Canada--the former being constrained by her food necessities, the latter by her want of a secure grain market. Old Canada, some say, has her natural outlet in the United States--which is only very partially true, as the reverse might be asserted with equal force. Not so the North-West. She has her natural market in Great Britain; and Great Britain, in turn, will find in the near future her best customer in Manitoba and the North-Western prairies. So mote it be! CHAPTER LXVII. THE TORONTO MECHANICS' INSTITUTE. The following account of the rise and progress of this institution, has been obligingly furnished me by one of its earliest and best friends, Mr. William Edwards, to whom, undoubtedly, more than to any other man, it has been indebted for its past success and usefulness: