ook to which the author
is indebted for much information of the same character.

[21] "William Pitt and the National Revival."

[22] Canadian Archives, 1905; "History of Prince Edward Island," D.
Campbell; "History of Canada," C.D.G. Roberts. In 1875, after a long
period of agitation and discontent, the Land Purchase Act was passed,
and the Dominion Government asked Mr. Hugh Childers to adjudicate on the
land-sale expressly on the ground that he had been associated with the
Irish Land Act of 1870 ("Life of Mr. Childers," by Lieut.-Col. Spencer
Childers, vol. i., p. 232).

[23] Canadian Archives, 1900. Note B. Emigration (1831-1834). Irish
immigrants in 1829, 9,614; in 1830, 18,300; in 1831, 34,155; in 1832,
28,024; in 1833, 12,013; in 1834, 19,206: about double the immigration
of English and Scottish together in the same period.

[24] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 96 _et seq_.

[25] "Durham Report," p. 130.

[26] Hansard, January 23.

[27] "Self-government in Canada," F. Bradshaw, p. 17.

[28] "Letters of Queen Victoria," vol. i., November 22, 1838.

CHAPTER VI

AUSTRALIA AND IRELAND

I have described the Canadian crisis at considerable length because it
was the turning-point in Imperial policy. Yet policy is scarcely the
right word. The Colonists themselves wrenched the right to
self-government from a reluctant Mother Country, and the Mother Country
herself was hardly conscious of the loss of her prerogatives until it
was too late to regret or recall them. The men who on principle believed
in and laboured for Home Rule for Canada were a mere unconsidered
handful in the country, while most of those who voted for the Act of
1840 thought that it killed Home Rule. No general election was held to
obtain the "verdict of the predominant partner" on the real question at
issue, with the cry of "American dollars" (which had, in fact, been
paid); with lurid portraits of Papineau and Mackenzie levying black-mail
on the Prime Minister, and quotations from their old speeches to show
that they were traitors to the Empire; with jeremiads about the terrors
of Rome, the abandonment of the loyal minority, and the dismemberment of
the Empire, to shake the nerves and stimulate the slothful conscience of
an ignorant electorate. Had there been any such opportunity we know it
would have been used, and we can guess what the result would have been;
for nothing is easier, alas! than to spur on a democracy with