children, or for succeeding generations? Let the future be discounted, let Great Britain be brought to beggary and ruin, so that I am spared a penny in the pound; and, after me, the deluge! The only panacea these theorists have to propose for the state of things which they are anxious to bring about, is that of limiting the multiplication of the species. This when, by opening new countries to emigration, we are proposing to constitute millions of new British loyal landowners! Fortunately such theorists do not constitute the majority in the nation, and we hope never will do so.

Making all reasonable deductions from the exaggerated hopes and pretensions of the Americans, no one in the United States expresses a doubt as to the success of the Central Pacific Railroad; and in San Francisco, such was the influence of the same conviction on the merchants and others, and their confidence in the results, that when Mr. Waddington was there, not above a year ago, palaces, he says, were literally rising up as if by magic. What, he says, must be the feelings of every Englishman, when trying to calculate the consequences of such a commercial revolution! One which, unless counteracted, will at the very onset throw the Chinese trade and that of Japan into the hands of the Americans. The precious metals-the transmission of which to the Oriental ports has been hitherto by way of London-will in future be sent at half cost by this more speedy and direct route; thus making New York and San Francisco, instead of London, the financial and banking centres of the trade of the world. The business of all those of our merchants, who are at present engaged in direct trade with those countries, will be disturbed, if not wrested from them; our communications with New Zealand and the Australian colonies displaced and thrown into foreign hands, and the general inroad into our commerce with the East will sound the first knell of England's decline.

This, too, at a time when Professor Maury, the celebrated American hydrographer, writing upon the commanding geographical position of Vancouver's Island in connexion with the different routes for an overland railroad, has given it as his opinion, which a glance at the map will at once serve to confirm, that "Vancouver Island commands the shores of Washington and Oregon, and whether the terminus of the North American road be on Puget Sound or at the mouth of the Columbia river, the munitions sent there could be used for no other part of the coast, for Vancouver overlooks them. They could not, on account of Vancouver in its military aspects, be sent from the northern terminus to San Francisco and the south; nor could the southern road-supposing only one and that at the south-send supplies in war from its terminus, whether at San Diego or San Francisco, by sea either to Oregon or Washington, Vancouver would pre

vent, for Vancouver commands their coasts as completely as England commands those of France on the Atlantic. So complete is this military curtain, that you never heard of France on the Atlantic sending succours by sea to France on the Mediterranean, or the reverse, in a war with England. The straits of Fuca are as close as the straits of Gibraltar."

What would become of the dominion and of her loyal feelings towards the mother country, adds Mr. Waddington, to this opinion of the American hydrographer, if, after being elevated by England almost to the state of an independent nation, she were to be all at once deprived by our neglect of this communication with the Pacific, as well as of the intervening Saskatchewan territory, both so essential to her development, to her maritime prosperity, her independence-nay, to her very existence. The interests of Canada and British Columbia, however identical with those of the mother country, are generally overlooked or neglected. Yet British America is one in interest, and together with the mother country must be one in purpose, if the danger with which both are menaced is to be averted. For that purpose, the different provinces of British North America must not only be politically united, and that speedily, so as to form a whole, but must at the same time be more directly and intimately connected with each other and with the mother country by means of regular steam communication. By these means British influences would be fostered and maintained, and immigration from the home country promoted; until a friendly but independent power could be gradually developed in British America, which would not only be no longer at the mercy of the neighbouring republic, as some pretend, but would, on the contrary, form an important counterpoise to that of the United States, and constitute an additional guarantee for the peace of the world.

Nor is there anything, we are further told, which is far-fetched in such a prevision, which is fairly justified by the astonishing progress which Canada has made within the last twelve years; a progress greater in proportion, both morally and materially, than that in the United States. In travelling through Canada, one feels at every step that she must become a great nation in spite of all obstacles, and at the same time different in its origin, its associations, its feelings, and character, from that of the United States. Nobody can estimate the value of such a political element, or what such a country may become. As long as that counterpoise on the American continent existed, the power of the republic would be broken, whilst England would be mistress of a surer road to the East than that by the isthmus of Suez, or any other she could possess. But let that weight be thrown into the opposite scale, and the rule of the United States extended over British America, and the balance of power is gone. With North

America, England would lose the West Indies, and be stripped of every point on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; her commerce and prestige would be destroyed; her very security with hostile armaments brought a thousand miles nearer to her coasts-endangered, and the peace of the world made a problem dependent on the goodwill or the caprice of the popular assemblies of the United States.

In a debate on the subject in the House of Commons, and in reply to Sir Harry Verney, who, like Lord Lytton, has always taken a deep interest in the question now before us, and who had insisted that the honour, interest, and duty of England alike required that she should take immediate action in the matter, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies replied, "He entertained no doubt that ultimately it would become the great thoroughfare of the world to the West, but (alluding to the opening of the Saskatchewan territory) there was not yet sufficient appreciation of its value in the public mind to cause the pressure, that he believed would yet be exerted, to be put upon the government to bring about a settlement of the question." In other words, it was the duty of a constitutional ministry, though convinced themselves, to await the pressure of public opinion before bringing forward such an important measure.

The fault, then, lies with the nation at large in being so wrapt up in party feelings and local interests, as to lead it to neglect more important questions. The fact is, that England, whilst slumbering under the lethargic effects of prosperity, seems not only to have forgotten that it is to her numerous colonies, to the possession of the Indies, and the control of the trade between Europe and Asia, that she owes her wealth and her existence as a great nation, but she seems to think that these must last for ever without any further effort to retain them. In England, every one is so much absorbed in his own affairs, and so habitually ignorant on colonial matters, that if he has, perchance, heard of this Pacific railroad, he neither thinks about it, nor cares about it, still less has he reflected on its consequences; nor can he be brought to believe that the construction of a rival road can be anything more than a foreign question, which, however important to the United States or to British America, can have any influence on the prosperity and the future of Great Britain.

People abroad, as is often the case, take a more general, and, therefore, more correct and enlightened view of the question, and the following extract from the Revue des Deux Mondes shows the importance attached to the subject long before the construction of the "Central Pacific Railway," by a people little interested in it: "England and the United States are both of them fully sensible that the time has arrived, when the sceptre of the commercial world must be grasped and held by the hand of that power which

shall be able to maintain the most certain and most rapid communication between Europe and Asia. It is not merely by the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea that henceforth the trade with the East is going to be carried on. The Eastern Continent of Asia will be roused to a new commercial activity from other parts, and especially from the several ports of the Chinese Empire. Consequently, the empire of the world, in a commercial point of view, will henceforth belong to that one of the two powers, of England or America, which shall be the first to find means to establish a direct road across the continent of America, whereby to communicate more rapidly with the great East on the Pacific side, and with Europe on the Atlantic side. This will be the great highway by which the products of the old world will have to be carried to the Eastern world.

"Hence it is that the victory, which is to give the empire of the world, will be gained by the power which shall be the first to establish the line of railroad across regions and countries which are yet unknown and unexplored. The struggle for the attainment of this great victory is well worth the trouble and expense which it will entail; for the empire of the seas and the commercial dominion over the whole world are the great stakes which are being played for."

It has been shown that the best and easiest line of communication to the Pacific, across the North America Continent, is through British territory. Providence seems, indeed, as if it had left a strip stretching across from the Atlantic to the Pacific as a last chance for Great Britain. Hemmed in at one extremity by Oregon and Aliaska (incorrectly written Alaska), territories of the United States, to the south and to the north, its central portions held as hunting grounds by a Malthusian Company, and without means of access, except by the United States, the tenure of this strip of land becomes yearly more and more jeopardised.

The struggle for commercial superiority, which has long been predicted, has now become imminent, and the day is fast approaching when that envied trade with the East, "the diversion of which has marked the decline of empires," is about to be wrested from England, unless she hastens to parry the blow. In the mean while, the high road over which this race is to come off between the two greatest commercial nations in the world, with Europe for spectator and Asia to hold the stakes, is still open to the competing parties. The vantage ground is even in favour of England; but while the latter has been in a state of somnolence, her active rival has been wide awake, and has left so much of the race behind her and got so far ahead, that nothing but the superiority of the two termini on the Atlantic and on the Pacific of the British line can oust her from her advantageous position.

THE reign of that illustrious monarch King Christmas had com menced again for the eighteen hundred and fifty-sixth time since its eventful opening, and the merry old king entered on his new career of the season with all the pomp that usually distinguishes his most excellent and gracious majesty-viz. wearing his royal mantle of snow and his regal diadem of frost, and the insignia of the noble order of the icicle depending conspicuously from his venerable and kingly neck. Truly was he a mighty monarch, and popular withal, as testified by the spirit of rejoicing pervading all classes of his subjects on his resuming the sceptre after an interregnum of a year. Not Henri IV. himself was ever more beloved or belauded by an adoring populace than this same antique, grey-bearded, grim-countenanced monarch was worshipped and glorified by his. Christmas! What sweet domestic visions fall like shadows from the magic lantern of memory on the tablets of the mind at the sound of the word! The heavy tramp of the boys home for the holidays, who seem like beings launched into a state of perpetual motion, a centrifugal force perpetually drawing them away from the domestic circle in the direc tion of certain kennels and stables, while another co-existing attraction in the form of sundry mince-pies, and plum-puddings encircled by "blue blazes," serves to cast a just balance, and produce an equality of revolution within a certain orbit; the girls, grouped round the great fire in the drawing-room in cosy chat, or turned out in the daintiest of petticoats and most fascinating of little fur-topped boots to sniff the keen wintry air, and there are odd shyings of snow-balls, and scampers after each other through the snow, or mayhap a delightful turn on the ice with the magic clogs strapped on to the soles, which diversion involves from the fair glisseuses a labyrinth of pretty attitudes and performances, and little screams and frights, and an absolute impossibility (in particular cases) of keeping up without a vast deal of support-you could not fancy how much, or rather you could very well if you had an acute imagination in such inatters. Then comes the quickly closing winter evening, when the fire roars merrily up the dining-room chimney, as if in pure gleeful sympathy with these festive times, and the glittering festoons of mistletoe and glossyleaved holly wink in the flickering light that plays a game of