ing colonists.

The character of a people is always

determined by that of the educated classes, and indi

The mass of the population

win their daily bread by

viduals belonging to them. must always be destined to daily toil. They may pass a quiet and happy life, but it must be in a certain sense monotonous and obscure. Beyond the narrow horizon of their ordinary hopes, they seek not to look. Their desires are limited to a wish for the means of comfortable subsistence, which they only hope or desire to attain by steady toil, and which they hope also may be the happy and quiet lot of their children after them. But the educated man, and they who are above the pains and anxieties of absolute want, and the fear of want, are rendered happy or miserable by hope. If they may hope to win renown, gain power for themselves—if a career by which these may be achieved lies before them, they will as a class be content, and love the country which affords this field for their ambition. But there is yet something wanting;-this class of man desires to derive honour from his country. As he and his generations derive advantage from the wealth which preceding generations have stored up, and left in various shapes to posterity; so all men desire to enjoy the benefit derived from the glory, and great deeds achieved, stored up, and left in many shapes, by their predecessors, to be the estate of renown for generations yet to come, who bear the same name and will be the same people. In a petty colony there is really no such career, and the hallucination by which sometimes minute and utterly insignificant dots of land, and handfuls of men, are led to think

themselves important, and assume airs of consequence and grandeur, has long been a subject of ridicule and contempt. In such circumstances of real insignificance, to revel in ideas of fancied greatness is a folly of which no sane and sensible person can be guilty. The intelligent members of such a community are therefore discontented with their position, and curse the fate which has thus condemned them to hopeless inferiority. Generally speaking, such is the usual lot of a colonial gentry-and if as colonists they have no hope of escaping from it, the educated classes of colonists will bend their eyes towards the future, which is to bring them independence, and open to them the path of renown and power. The career that lies before two men, one of whom has been born and lives upon the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, and the other on the north of that river, is a striking example of the observation here made. The one is a citizen of the United States, the other a subject of England, a Canadian colonist. The one has a country which he can call his own; a great country, already distinguished in arms, in arts, and in some degree in literature. In his country's honour and fame the American has a share, and he enters upon his career of life with lofty aspirations, hoping to achieve fame himself in some of the many paths to renown which his country offers. She has a senate, an army, a navy, a bar, many powerful and wealthy churches; her men of science, her physicians, philosophers, are all a national brotherhood, giving and receiving distinction. How galling to the poor colonist, is the contrast to this, which his inglorious career affords. He has no country-the place where he was born, and

where he is to linger out his life, unknown to famė, has no history -no past glory, no present renown. What there is of note is England's? Canada is not a nation—she is a colony-a tiny sphere, the satellite of a mighty star, in whose brightness she is lost. Canada has no navy, no army, no literature, no brotherhood of science. If, then, a Canadian looks for honour in any of these various fields, he must seek it as an Englishman; he must forget and desert his country, before he can be known to fame. We must not then wonder if we find every intelligent and ambitious Canadian with a feeling of bitterness in his heart— because of his own inferiority of condition. Few will own to entertaining this feeling if they be prudent, even to friends; some, indeed, contrive to hide it from themselves; nevertheless, there it is—and must be, so long as his country remains a colony. But by care the painful part of this condition may be greatly diminished, if not entirely taken away, and what little remains may be, perhaps, more than compensated by the benefits which the colony may derive from England, by whose friendly aid and honourable kindness she may be enabled to hold a higher position among nations, than she could do, were she entirely independent. The first step to take in every case, in order to reach this end, is to make the colony the manager of its own concerns; the next is to increase these concerns in variety and extent, so that they may become important, not only to the colonist, but to the nations of the earth. plan which I am now about to lay before the reader, has these ends especially in view. I seek to frame a polity

The

which contemplates the colony in its commencement-in its infancy-and onward in its course, till it becomes an established and self-governing community; my polity then seeks to unite this self-governing state with others, having the same interests, and living under the same laws and according to the same rule of government. Thus my plan proceeds preparing for a continually increasing power and importance-providing a secure and comfortable subsistence for the humble millions who constitute the large majority of the people-and opening a career of honourable ambition for the more aspiring leaders, by whom the people will be guided, ruled, and led.

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CHAPTER IV.

WITH these remarkable examples before our eyes,

there is no great difficulty in framing a plan for the effective management of our Colonial possessions. Three of the SYSTEMS above mentioned-viz., 1 That of British North America,

2 That of Australasia,

3 That of South Africa,

are in themselves so vast, as to require to be separated into many distinct PROVINCES; and the separate provinces of each system may be united into one federal union.

New Zealand is not so extensive as to require such separation; it ought to be one province. But as such PROVINCE it will need the organization which is required in the cases of the separate PROVINCES of the SYSTEMS above mentioned, and will, therefore, in the following statements, be so far a subject of consideration.

My plan will, therefore, directly relate to the four separate portions of our Colonial possessions here named -viz.:

1 British North America.

2 Australasia.

3 South Africa.

4 New Zealand.