But,

'uniting philanthropy with a five per cent. dividend.' having what the Hindoos call the great gift, he was able to form a syndicate of Englishmen, Canadians, and Americans, and to animate them with some of his own invincible spirit. In 1880 the highway to the Pacific was begun; in 1885 it was finished, five years before contract time, an act of faith on the part of the Dominion Ministry, and an effort of financial and organising skill on the part of the Company, without a parallel in modern times. Like Lord Kitchener's re-occupation of the Soudan, it was almost mechanical in the swiftness, completeness, and thoroughness of its advance. The day on which the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven by Sir Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona, saw British North America become practically as well as theoretically a confederacy.

It must indeed have been a supreme moment for the aged statesman when he first looked out on the Pacific. More fortunate than Moses on Mount Pisgah, he surveyed the Promised Land into which he had led the Canadian people after their weary wanderings through the wilderness of disunion, provincialism, and weakness. From an Imperial point of view he had materially altered the position of England with regard to the world by giving her that western route to the East which fired the imagination of Columbus. The Canadian Pacific is one of the strongest links in the chain of defence with which the race has encircled the globe, inasmuch as by it troops and stores can be landed in India and China in thirty-five days from London. At one end of it is Halifax, one of the keys of the North Atlantic, at the other Esquimalt, the key of the North Pacific. Moreover it has brought British Columbia, with the only valuable coal fields on the Pacific coast, nearer to Liverpool by ten thousand miles; opened up to Europe's starving millions the North-West Territories, and linked Australia to the mother country by way of the West.

Nothing is more irritating to the colonial mind than the air of calm superiority with which Englishmen take it for granted that, while the colonial view of a question is provincial, theirs is Imperial. History tells no such flattering tale; the present attitude of Canada and Australasia disproves it; and the public life of Sir John Macdonald gives it the lie direct. In his view of the relations which should exist between England and her colonies, and the course which should have been taken when confederation became an accomplished fact, the Premier of Canada showed a sounder political instinct than the British Ministers. Again, when Fenianism reached an acute stage in Vol. 191.-No. 382.

2 B

the colony, which Government showed the widest outlook, the Home Government or the Colonial Government? In her attitude towards boundary questions, commercial treaties, and the never-ending disputes with the United States, and in connexion with the fisheries, Canada, through her Premier, has always acted as became England's eldest daughter; but never did she play a more Imperial part than in 1872, when, though she knew her interests had been sacrificed, she accepted the Treaty of Washington. The very fact that Canada has never entangled the mother country in a war with the United States demonstrates conclusively that she has a capacity for restraint, a respect for international law, and a sense of dignity and honour which are more often associated with great and ancient Empires than with young and struggling countries.

Consider, on the other hand, England's attitude towards the delegates who came to lay the proposals for Canadian confederation before the Home authorities. Had they represented an obscure scientific or professional body instead of colonies developing into a nation, their presence in London could not have created less stir. Their arrival passed unnoticed, save for a tiny paragraph carefully hidden away in a corner of the Times'; and thenceforward, until the end of their visit, for all the public heard of them, they might still have been deliberating in Quebec. One solitary banquet was given in their honour by the Canada Club, at which the only distinguished English guests present were Lord Carnarvon and Sir John Pakington. The newspapers were as silent about their personalities and careers as they were about the errand on which they were bent.

Nor was this all. The British North America Bill was introduced in the House of Lords by the Earl of Carnarvon in a singularly able and telling speech; but, incredible as such an omission may seem, the name of Sir John Macdonald was never once mentioned. The noble lord was so anxious to do justice to his predecessor in office, Mr. Cardwell, who with zeal, ability, and vigilance' had laboured' to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion,' that be entirely neglected to do justice to the man whose name will be identified with the Confederation of Canada when the names of Carnarvon and Cardwell are forgotten. That is to say, the Earl remembered party tradition better than he remembered his position as an Imperial Minister. His speech gives the idea that Sir Edmund Head, several Colonial Secretaries, and the Colonial Office, shared the credit of the Bill with the delegates, whereas they did nothing of the kind. Earl Russell, though he referred to

Sir James Kemp, Governor of Nova Scotia, and to Lord Durham, never once alluded to Sir John Macdonald. The House of Commons was animated by the same spirit. Mr. Adderley, who introduced the Bill, did indeed describe the delegates as some of the most eminent men in the Provinces,' but the only statesmen to whom he referred by name were Mr. Howe, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Monck. Mr. Cardwell also omitted to speak of the services of the real authors of confederation. As the delegates were merely delegates in the opinion of the public and the press, so they were merely delegates in the opinion of Her Majesty's Ministers.

On the morrow of the debate most of the newspapers devoted a leading article to the British North America Bill, and in none of them did the name of Sir John Macdonald occur. The 'Standard,' the Post,' and the Globe' were sympathetic. The 'Daily News' described the measure as 'gathering up the fragments, but silencing the masses.' The Daily Advertiser' was more interested in an American federal dispute than in the founding of a new England. The Times' regarded confederation as a means by which this country would be 'relieved from much expense and much embarrassment.' The Pall Mall

Gazette,' then edited by Mr. Greenwood, looked on it as a preliminary to independence, which of course could be had for the asking,' and it would not be sorry that the request should be made.' The Spectator' and the Saturday Review' were more far-seeing and kindly, but the monthly journals were dumb. As Sir John Macdonald wrote to a friend, the union of the Canadas attracted less notice in England than the union of two English parishes would have done. Such indifference is hardly conceivable at the present day; and yet the slight attention which has been paid to the federation of Australia during the last twelve months shows how far we are still removed from an intelligent comprehension of the British Empire.

It has been said that the British North America Act is the foundation stone of Canada's future greatness, and the Canadian Pacific Railway the iron band which gives its scattered Provinces material unity. Something more, however, was required to make the Dominion a nation, and this Sir John Macdonald conferred on it in the National policy, than which nothing else in his long career has been more adversely criticised. But, like the true statesman that he was, he argued that it is the duty of a political leader not to lose himself in abstractions or to be frightened at a word, but to deal with facts so as to meet the varying needs of the moment. The

economic conditions of Canada were not such as to permit the adoption of Free Trade, while other arguments made Protection imperative. These were set forth by Sir John in a carefully drawn-up State paper, from which the following words are taken :

That this House is of opinion that the welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National policy, which by a judicious re-adjustment of the tariff will benefit and foster the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing, and other interests of the Dominion; that such a policy will retain in Canada thousands of our fellowcountrymen now obliged to expatriate themselves in search of the employment denied them at home; will restore prosperity to our struggling industries, now so sadly depressed; will prevent Canada from being made a “sacrifice market"; will encourage and develope an active inter-Provincial trade, and moving (as it ought to do) in the direction of a reciprocity of tariffs with our neighbours, so far as the varied interests of Canada may demand, will greatly tend to procure for this country eventually a reciprocity of trade.'

It was, in fact, impossible for Canada to flourish with a tariff of fifteen per cent. side by side with a rich and powerful country which levied fifty per cent. The strongest justification of the National policy is its success. It has stimulated the internal and external development of the Dominion, checked the movement for annexation to the United States and the flow of emigration thither, and above all enabled the agricultural and manufacturing industries of Canada to compete successfully with those of other countries. It has also contributed largely to the formation of a strong national sentiment, without which a colony, like a nation, is apt to drift towards political dissolution or political dependence. That he was able thus to foster local patriotism without allowing it to become provincial, to combine Colonial and Imperial interests, was perhaps the greatest mark of Sir John Macdonald's genius. He understood that unity in variety, harmony in diversity, is the essence of our political system and the condition of our national existence. One spirit in many forms must animate this Empire if it is to hold together. To infuse this spirit was the aim of Sir John Macdonald's life; to found a policy which has now been adopted by the whole British race was his almost unique achievement.

*Journals,' House of Commons, 12th March, 1878, p. 78.

ART. V.-TOLSTOI'S VIEWS OF ART.

1. Qu'est-ce que l'art? Par le Comte Léon Tolstoï. Traduit du russe et précédé d'une Introduction par Téodor de Wyzewa. Paris: Perrin et Cie., 1898.

2. Le Rôle de l'art d'après Tolstoi. Par E. Halpérine-Kaminsky. Paris: De Soye et fils, 1898.

3. Pensées de Tolstoi, d'après les textes russes. Par Ossip-Lourié. Paris: Alcan, 1898.

EO TOLSTOI'S recent volume on Art closes significantly

the series of his arraignments of what we have been pleased to call civilisation. Like all his later works, be their shape polemical, illustrative, or allegorical, treatise or play or novel or parable, this volume on art shows Tolstoi in his character of lay prophet, with all its powers and all its weaknesses. For it would seem-we notice it in two other great lay prophets, Carlyle and Ruskin-that the gift of seeing through the accepted falsehoods of the present, and foretelling the improbable realities of the future, can arise only in creatures too far overpowered by their own magnificent nature to understand other men's ways of being and thinking; in minds so bent upon how things should be as to lose sight of how things are and how things came to be. While Carlyle, embodying his passionate instincts in historical narrative, was moderated at least by his knowledge of the past and of the consequent origin and necessity of the present-while Ruskin, accepting the whole moral and religious training of his times, was in so far in touch with his contemporaries-Tolstoi has broken equally with everything, if ever he had really much to break with. Destitute of all historic sense, impervious to any form of science, and accepting the Gospel only as the nominal text for a religion of his own making, he has become incapable of admitting more than one side to any question, more than one solution to any difficulty, more than one factor in any phenomenon. He has lost all sense of cause and effect, all acquiescence in necessity, and all real trustfulness in the ways of the universe. Most things are wrong, wholly, utterly wrong; their wrongness has never originated in any right, and never will be transformed into right until-well, until mankind be converted to Tolstoi's theory and practice. Economic and domestic arrangements, laws, politics, religion, all wrong; and now, art also.

Unreasonableness like this is contagious, and Tolstoi's