Now, the two oceans are
reached by land, and a fortnight suffices for the conveyance of our
people from London or Liverpool to or from the great Pacific, on the
way to the great East.
Anyone who reads what follows will learn that I am an Imperialist--that
I hate little-Englandism. That, so far as my puny forces would go, I
struggled for the union of the Canadian Provinces, in order that they
might be retained under the sway of the best form of government--a
limited monarchy, and under the best government of that form--the
beneficent rule of our Queen Victoria. I like to say our Queen: for no
sovereign ever identified herself in heart and feeling, in anxiety and
personal sacrifice, with a free and grateful people more thoroughly
than she has done, all along.
In this period of thirty-six years the British American Provinces have
been, more than once, on the slide. The abolition of the old Colonial
policy of trade was a great wrench. The cold, neglectful, contemptuous
treatment of Colonies in general, and of Canada in particular, by the
doctrinaire Whigs and Benthamite-Radicals, and by Tories of the
Adderley school, had, up to recent periods, become a painful strain.
Denuding Canada of the Imperial red-coat disgusted very many.
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