Canada, for so long a time apparently forgotten by her mother country, came out from her isolation and again called back to herself the attention of France by sending to the Exposition of 1855 specimens of her products. In 1856 M. de Belveze, commander of the French frigate “Capricieuse,” was sent into Canadian waters. His mission resulted in the establishment of a French consulate, and the reduction of the tariff which permitted the two countries to enter upon commercial relations. From 1854 to 1862 material and intellectual progress here marched by the side of great political progress. Public works, canals, and interior colonization, all, during this time received a vigorous impulse. There is no such thing as spontaneous generation in politics any more than in natural history. Questions give rise to other questions, and the philosophy of history shows them springing up, one after another, from some mysterious source, obeying a sort of atavism, and producing often a most unexpected result. Excitement over representation, fixed according to the population of the country, gave birth to the confederacy. On October 1, 1864, a conference assembled at Quebec, composed of delegates from the maritime provinces, and from the Canadian government. After a long and stormy session, during which threats of resorting to arms were now and then heard, the cause of the confederation triumphed by a large majority. A basis of federal union was submitted to the several legislatures for ratification, and on July 1, 1867, the confederacy was established in the midst of public rejoicings. They gave to the united provinces the name of the Dominion of Canada. Lower Canada was called Quebec, and Upper Canada Ontario. The Legislature is composed of a Governor-general, a sort of a constitutional viceroy, named by the crown; of a Senate, and a House of Commons. The Senate consists of seventy-six members, appointed for life by the crown, of whom twenty-four each are from Quebec and Ontario. The House of Commons is representative, its members being elected for five years. The Dominion now includes Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the territory of the North-West, or Hudson’s Bay Territory. Thus it is fulfilling the prediction of the great American statesman, William H. Seward: “Canada is destined to become the seat of a great empire, the Russia of North America, but a Russia with civilization more advanced than the Russia of Europe.” An illustrated paper of the Dominion has published a patriotic caricature representing the Canadian Gulliver with a debonair and placid figure, without any implements save his own gigantic arms and hands, seizing and swallowing the greater part of the American continent, while a crowd of Lilliputians, armed to the teeth, Turks, Yankees, Germans and Italians, survey him with an envious and astonished air.