These conditions are not normal, and sooner or later must change.
It is not in the nature of things that this North American
continent should be arbitrarily divided in its most fertile midst
by political lines, and by and by it will be impossible to keep
the multiplying millions south of the imaginary line from surging
across into the rich vacant territory to the north. The outcome is
inevitable; neither diplomacy nor statecraft can prevent it.

When the population of this country is a hundred or a hundred and
fifty millions the line will have disappeared. There may be a
struggle of some kind over some real or fancied grievance, but,
struggle or no struggle, it is not for man to oppose for long
inevitable tendencies. In the long run, population, like water,
seeks its level; in adjacent territories, the natural advantages
and attractions of which are alike, the population tends strongly
to become equally dense; political conditions and differences in
race and language may for a time hold this tendency in check, but
where race and language are the same, political barriers must soon
give way.

All that has preserved Canada from absorption up to this time is
the existence of those mighty natural barriers, the St. Lawrence
and the great lakes. As population increases in the Northwest,
where the dividing line is known only to surveyors, the situation
will become critical. Already the rush to the Klondike has
produced trouble in Alaska. The aggressive miners from this side,
who constitute almost the entire population, submit with ill-grace
to Canadian authority. They do not like it, and Dawson or some
near point may yet become a second Johannesburg.

In all controversies so far, Canada has been as belligerent as
England has been conciliatory. With rare tact and diplomacy
England has avoided all serious differences with this country over
Canadian matters without at the same time offending the pride of
the Dominion; just how long this can be kept up no man can tell;
but not for more than a generation to come, if so long.

So far as the people of Canada are concerned, practically all
would be opposed to any form of annexation. The great majority of
the people are Englishmen at heart and very English in thought,
habit, speech, and accent; they are much more closely allied to
the mother country than to this; and they are exceedingly
patriotic.

They do not like us because they rather fear us,--not physically,
not as man a