don _Times_. The _Times_ says:
"Without doubt the expansion of Canada is the greatest political event
in the British Empire to-day. The empire is face to face with
development which makes it impossible for indefinite maintenance of the
present constitutional arrangements."

Regarding the Iceland immigrants, to whom reference is made, I recently
met in London a famed traveler, who was in Iceland when the people were
setting out for Canada, Mrs. Alec. Tweedie. She explains in her book
how these people were absolutely poverty-stricken when they left
Iceland. In fact, the sufferings endured the first year in Winnipeg
were mild compared to their privations in Iceland before they sailed.

The explanations of Canada's hard times from Confederation to 1898--say
from 1871, when all the provinces had really gone into Confederation,
to 1897, when the Yukon boom poured gold into the country--can be
figured out. Of a population of 3,000,000, four fifths need not be
counted as taxpayers, as they include women, children, clerks, farmers'
help, domestic help,--classes who pay no taxes but the indirect duty on
clothes they wear and food they eat. This practically means that the
billion-dollar burden of making the ideal of Confederation into a
reality by building railroads and canals was borne by 600,000 people,
which means again a large quota per man to the public treasury. People
forget that you can't take more out of the public treasury than you put
into it, that it is n't like an artesian well, self-supplied, and the
truth is, at this period Canadians were paying more into the public
treasury than they could afford,--more than the investment was bringing
them in.

{xvii}

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FROM 1000 TO 1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

II. FROM 1600 TO 1607 . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

III. FROM 1607 TO 1635 . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

IV. FROM 1635 TO 1666 . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

V. FROM 1635 TO 1650 . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

VI. FROM 1650 TO 1672 . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

VII. FROM 1672 TO 1688 . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

VIII. FROM 1679 TO 1713 . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

IX. FROM 1686 TO 1698 . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

X. FROM 1698 TO 1713 . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

XI. FROM 1713 TO 1755 . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

XII. FROM 1756 TO 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

XIII. FROM 1763 TO 181