Untitled

84 THE GREAT LONE LAND.
of your possible future, parties every where in your pro*
vinces, and of every kind, except a national -party; no
breadth, no depth, no earnest striving to make you gTeat
amongst the nations, each one for himself and no one for
the country; men fighting for a sect, for a province^ for a
nationality, but no one for the nation; and all this while,
close alongside, your great rival grew with giant's growth,
looking far into the future before him, cutting his cloth
with perspective ideas of what his limbs would attain to
in after-time, digging his canals and grading his railroads,
with one eye on the Atlantic and the other on the
Pacific, spreading himself, monopolizing, annexing, outmanoeuvring
and flanking those colonial bodies who sat
in solemn state in Downing Street and wrote windy proclamations
and despatches anent boundary-lines, of which
they knew next to nothing. Macaulay laughs at poor
Newcastle for his childish delight in finding out that Cape
Breton was an island, but I strongly suspect there were
other and later Newcastles whose geographical knowledge
on matters American were not a whit superior. Poor
Canada! they muddled you out of Maine, and the open
harbour of Portland, out of Rouse's Point, and the command
of Lake Champlain, out of many a fair mile far away by the
Rocky Mountains. It little matters whether it was the
treaty of 1783, or 1818, or '21, or '48, or '71, the worst of
every bargain, at all times, fell to you.
I have said that the possession of the canal at the Sault
St. Marie enabled the Americans to delay the progress of
the Red River Expedition. The embargo put upon the
Canadian vessels originated, however, in the State, and not
the Federal, authorities; that is to say, the State of Michigan
issued the prohibition against the passage of the steamboat,
and not the Cabinet of Washington. Finally,