The Canadian Commonwealth

The Canadian Commonwealth

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Canadian Commonwealth, by
Agnes C. Laut
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Canadian Commonwealth
Author: Agnes C. Laut

Release Date: March 21, 2006 [eBook #18032]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
CANADIAN COMMONWEALTH***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE CANADIAN COMMONWEALTH
by

AGNES C. LAUT
Author of Lords of the North, Pathfinders of the West, Hudson's Bay
Company, etc.

Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright 1915
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS II FOUNDATION FOR HOPE III
THE TIE THAT BINDS IV AMERICANIZATION V WHY
RECIPROCITY WAS REJECTED VI THE COMING OF THE
ENGLISH VII THE COMING OF THE FOREIGNER VIII THE
COMING OF THE ORIENTAL IX THE HINDU X WHAT PANAMA
MEANS XI TO EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY XII SOME
INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS XIII HOW GOVERNED XIV THE LIFE
OF THE PEOPLE XV EMIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT XVI
DEFENSE XVII THE DOMAIN OF THE NORTH XVIII FINDING
HERSELF INDEX

THE CANADIAN COMMONWEALTH
CHAPTER I
NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS
I
An empire the size of Europe setting out on her career of world history

is a phenomenon of vast and deep enough import to stir to national
consciousness the slumbering spirit of any people. Yet when you come
to trace when and where national consciousness awakened, it is like
following a river back from the ocean to its mountain springs. From the
silt borne down on the flood-tide you can guess the fertile plains
watered and far above the fertile plains, regions of eternal snow and
glacial torrent warring turbulently through the adamantine rocks. You
can guess the eternal striving, the forward rush and the throwback that
have carved a way through the solid rocks; but until you have followed
the river to its source and tried to stem its current you can not know.
So of peoples and nations.
Fifty years ago, as far as world affairs were concerned, Japan did not
exist. Came national consciousness, and Japan rose like a star
dominating the Orient. A hundred years ago Germany did not exist.
Came national consciousness welding chaotic principalities into unity,
and the mailed fist of the empire became a menace before which
Europe quailed. So of China with the ferment of freedom leavening the
whole. So of the United States with the Civil War blending into a union
the diversities of a continent. When you come to consider the birth of
national consciousness in Canada, you do not find the germ of an
ambition to dominate, as in Japan and Germany. Nor do you find a
fight for freedom. Canada has always been free--free as the birds of
passage that winged above the canoe of the first voyageur who pointed
his craft up the St. Lawrence for the Pacific; but what you do find from
the very first is a fight for national existence; and when the fight was
won, Canada arose like a wrestler with consciousness of strength for
new destiny.
II
Go back to the beginning of Canada!
She was not settled by land-seekers. Neither was she peopled by
adventurers seeking gold. The first settlers on the banks of the St.
Lawrence came to plant the Cross and propagate the Faith. True, they
found they could support their missions and extend the Faith by the fur

trade; and their gay adventurers of the fur trade threaded every river
and lake from the St. Lawrence to the Columbia; but, primarily, the
lure that led the French to the St. Lawrence was the lure of a religious
ideal. So of Ontario and the English provinces. Ontario was first
peopled by United Empire Loyalists, who refused to give up their
loyalty to the Crown and left New England and the South, abandoning
all earthly possessions to begin life anew in the backwoods of the Great
Lakes country. The French came pursuing an ideal of religion. The
English came pursuing an ideal of government. We may smile at the
excesses of both devotees--French nuns, who swooned in religious
ecstasy; old English aristocrats, who referred to democracy as "the
black rot plague of the age"; but the fact remains--these colonists came
in unselfish pursuit of ideals; and they gave of their blood and their
brawn and all earthly possessions for those ideals; and it is of such stuff
that the spirit of dauntless nationhood is made. Men who build temples
of their lives for ideals do not cement national mortar with graft. They
build with integrity for eternity, not time. Their consciousness of an