ge or small, to carry on efficiently all those
public improvements essential to the comfort, convenience and general
necessities of the different communities that make up the province at
large. Even in the territories of the north-west, every proper facility
is given to the people in a populous district, or town, to organise a
system equal to all their local requirements.

Every Englishman will consider it an interesting and encouraging fact
that the Canadian people, despite their neighbourhood to a prosperous
federal commonwealth, should not even in the most critical and gloomy
periods of their history have shown any disposition to mould their
institutions directly on those of the United States and lay the
foundation for future political union. Previous to 1840, which was the
commencement of a new era in the political history of the provinces,
there was a time when discontent prevailed throughout the Canadas, but
not even then did any large body of the people threaten to sever the
connection with the parent state. The Act of Confederation was framed
under the direct influence of Sir John Macdonald and Sir George Cartier,
and although one was an English Canadian and the other a French
Canadian, neither yielded to the other in the desire to build up a
Dominion on the basis of English institutions, in the closest possible
connection with the mother country. While the question of union was
under consideration it was English statesmen and writers alone who
predicted that this new federation, with its great extent of territory,
its abundant resources, and ambitious people, would eventually form a
new nation independent of Great Britain. Canadian statesmen never spoke
or wrote of separation, but regarded the constitutional change in their
political condition as giving them greater weight and strength in the
empire. The influence of British example on the Canadian Dominion can be
seen throughout its governmental machinery, in the system of
parliamentary government, in the constitution of the privy council and
the houses of parliament, in an independent judiciary, in appointed
officials of every class--in the provincial as well as Dominion
system--in a permanent and non-political civil service, and in all
elements of sound administration. During the thirty-three years that
have passed since 1867, the attachment to England and her institutions
has gained in strength, and it is clear that those predictions of
Englishmen to which