Canada and the States

Canada and the States

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Title: Canada and the States
Author: Edward William Watkin
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CANADA AND THE STATES RECOLLECTIONS 1851 to 1886.
BY SIR E. W. WATKIN, BART., M.P.
"_If the Maritime Provinces [of Britain] would join us, spontaneously,
to-day--sterile as they may be in the soil under a sky of steel--still with
their hardy population, their harbours, fisheries, and seamen, they
would greatly strengthen and improve our position_, and aid us in our
struggle for equality upon the ocean. _If we would succeed upon the
deep, we must either maintain our fisheries or_ ABSORB THE
PROVINCES."
E. H. DERBY, Esq, Report to the Revenue Commissioners of the
United States, 1866.

[Illustration: The Duke of Newcastle, K.G.]

_In the absence of any formal Dedication, I feel that to no one could the
following pages be more appropriately inscribed than to_
Lady Watkin.
_On her have fallen the anxieties of our home life during my many
long absences away on the American Continent--which Continent she
once, in 1862, visited with me. My business, in relation to Canada, has,
from time to time, been undertaken with her knowledge, and under her
good advice; and no one has been animated with a stronger hope for
Canada, as a great integral part of the Empire of the Queen, than
herself._

_E. W. WATKIN._ _ROSE HILL, NORTHENDEN,_ _2nd May,
1887._

PREFACE.
The following pages have been written at the request of many old
friends, some of them co-workers in the cause of permanent British rule
over the larger part of the Great Northern Continent of America.
In 1851 I visited Canada and the United States as a mere tourist, in
search of health. In 1861 I went there on an anxious mission of
business; and for some years afterwards I frequently crossed the
Atlantic, not only during the great Civil War between the North and
South, but, also, subsequent to its close. In 1875 I had to undertake
another mission of responsibility to the United States. And, last year, I
traversed the Dominion of Canada from Belle Isle to the Pacific. I
returned home by San Francisco and the Union Pacific Railways to
Chicago; and by Montreal to New York. Thence to Liverpool, in that
unsurpassed steamer, the "Etruria," of the grand old Cunard line. I
ended my visits to America, as I began them, as a tourist. This passage
was my thirtieth crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
Within the period from 1851 to 1886, history on the North American
Continent has been a wonderful romance. Never in the older stories of
the world's growth, have momentous changes been effected, and,
apparently, consolidated, in so short a time, or in such rapid succession.
Regarding the United States, the slavery of four millions of the negro
race is abolished for ever, and the black men vote for Presidents. A
great struggle for empire--fought on gigantic measure--has been won
for liberty and union. Turning to Canada, the British half of the
Continent has been moulded into one great unity, and faggotted
together, without the shedding of one drop of brothers' blood--and in so
tame and quiet a way, that the great silent forces of Nature have to be
cited, to find a parallel.
In this period, the American Continent has been spanned by three main
routes of iron-road, uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: and one of
these main routes passes exclusively through British territory--the
Dominion