Canada and the States | Page 8

while entrusted with the portfolio of the Colonies, to strengthen and bind together all that was loyal north of the United States boundary.
Walking with Mr. Seward in the streets of Albany, after the day's shouts and ceremonies were over, Mr. Seward said to the Duke, "We really do not want to go to war with you; and we know you dare not go to war with us." To which the Duke replied, "Do not remain under such an error. There is no people under Heaven from whom we should endure so much as from yours; to whom we should make such concessions. You may, while we cannot, forget that we are largely of the same blood. But once touch us in our honour and you will very soon find the bricks of New York and Boston falling about your heads." In relating this to me the Duke added, "I startled Seward a good deal; but he put on a look of incredulity nevertheless. And I do not think they believe we should ever fight them; but we certainly should if the provocation were strong." It will be remarked that this conversation between Seward and the Duke was in 1860. That no one, then, expected a revolution from an anti-slave-state election of President. Still less did the people, of either England or the United States, dream of a divergence, consequent on such an election, to end in a struggle, first for political power, and then following, in providential order, for human freedom. A struggle culminating in the entire subjection of the South, in 1865, after four years' war--a struggle costing a million of lives, untold human misery, and a loss in money, or money's worth, of over a thousand millions sterling.
In our many conversations, I had always ventured to enforce upon the Duke that the passion for territory, for space, would be found at the bottom of all discussion with the United States. Give them territory, not their own, and for a time you would appease them, while, still, the very feast would sharpen their hunger. I reminded the Duke that General Cass had said, "I have an awful swallow ('swaller' was his pronunciation) for territory;" and all Americans have that "awful swallow." The dream of possessing a country extending from the Pole to the Isthmus of Panama, if not to Cape Horn, has been the ambition of the Great Republic--and it is a dangerous ambition for the rest of the world. We have seen its effects in all our treaties. We have always been asked for land. We gave up Michigan after the war of 1812. We gave up that noble piece, the "Aroostook" country, now part of the State of Maine, under the Ashburton Treaty in 1841. We have, again, been shuffled out of our boundary at St. Juan on the Pacific, under an arbitration which really contained its own award. The Reciprocity Treaty was put an end to, in 1866, by the United States, not because the Great West--who may govern the Union if they please--did not want it, but because the Great West was cajoled by the cunning East into believing that a restriction of intercourse between the United States and the British Provinces would, at last, force the subjects of the Queen to seek admission into the Republic. So it was, and is and will be; and the only way to prevent aggression and war was, is, and will be, to "put our foot down." Not to cherish the "peace-in-our-time" policy, or to indulge in the half-hearted language, to which I shall have hereafter to allude--but to combine and strengthen the sections of our Colonial Empire in the West--to give to their people a greater Empire still, a nobler history, and a prouder lot: a lot to _last_, because based upon institutions which have stood, and will stand, the test of time and trouble. Unfortunately we have had a "little England" party in our country. A Liberal Government, immediately following the Act of Confederation, took every red-coat out of the Dominion of Canada, shipped off, or sold, the very shot and shell to any one, friend or foe, who chose to buy: and the few guns and mortars Canada demanded were charged to her "in account" with the ruth of the miser. If the Duke of Newcastle had been a member of that Cabinet such a miserable policy never could have been put in force; but he was dead. I venture to think that the whole people of England, who knew of the transaction, were ashamed of it. Certainly, I saw, a few years ago, that one member of the very Cabinet which did this thing, repudiated the "little England" policy, as opposed to the best traditions of the Liberal party.
The "little England" party of the