European race which have any claim to the character of important communities." In this instance the victa causa pleased not only Cato, but, in the end, the gods as well.

Lord Durham's report was acknowledged by enemies as well as by the most impartial critics to be a masterly document. As Mr. Mill has said, it laid the foundation of the political success and social prosperity not only of Canada but of all the other important colonies. After having explained in the most exhaustive manner the causes of discontent and backwardness in Canada, it went on to recommend that the government of the colony should be put as much as possible into the hands of the colonists themselves, that they themselves should execute as well as make the laws, the limit of the Imperial Government's interference being in such matters as affect the relations of the colony with the mother-country, such as the constitution and form of government, the regulation of foreign relations and trade, and the disposal of the public lands. Lord Durham proposed to establish a thoroughly good system of municipal institutions; to secure the independence of the judges; to make all provincial officers, except the governor and his secretary, responsible to the colonial legislature; and to repeal all former legislation with respect to the reserves of land for the clergy. Finally, he proposed that the provinces of Canada should be reunited politically and should become one legislature, containing the representatives of both races and of all districts. It is significant that the report also recommended that in any act to be introduced for this purpose, a provision should be made by which all or any of the other North American colonies should, on the application of their legislatures and with the consent of Canada, be admitted into the Canadian Union. Thus the separation which Fox thought unwise. was to be abolished, and the Canadas were to be fused into one system, which Lord Durham would have had a federation. In brief, Lord Durham proposed to make the Canadas self-governing as regards their internal affairs, and the germ of a federal union. It is not necessary to describe in detail the steps by which the Government gradually introduced the recommendations of Lord Durham to Parliament and carried them to success. Lord Glenelg, one of the feeblest and most apathetic of colonial secretaries, had retired from

office, partly, no doubt, because of the attacks in Parliament on his administration of Canadian affairs. He was succeeded at the Colonial Office by Lord Normanby, and Lord Normanby gave way in a few months to Lord John Russell, who was full of energy and earnestness. Lord Durham's successor and disciple in the work of Canadian government, Lord Sydenham-best known as Mr. Charles Poulett Thomson, one of the pioneers of free-trade-received Lord John Russell's cordial co-operation and support. Lord John Russell introduced into the House of Commons a bill which he described as intended to lay the foundation of a permanent settlement of the affairs of Canada. The measure was postponed for a session because some statesmen thought that it would not be acceptable to the Canadians themselves. Some little sputterings of the rebellion had also lingered after Lord Durham's return to this country, and these for a short time had directed attention away from the policy of reorganization. In 1840, however, the Act was passed which reunited Upper and Lower Canada on the basis proposed by Lord Durham. Further legislation disposed of the clergy reserve lands for the general benefit of all churches and denominations. The way was made clear for that scheme which in times nearer to our own has formed the Dominion of Canada.

Lord Durham did not live to see the success of the policy he had recommended. We may anticipate the close of his career. Within a few days after the passing of the Canada Government Bill he died at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on July 28th, 1840. He was then little more than forty-eight years of age. He had for some time been in failing health, and it cannot be doubted that the mortification attending his Canadian mission had worn away his strength. His proud and sensitive spirit could ill bear the contradictions and humiliations that had been forced upon him. His was an eager and a passionate nature, full of that sæva indignatio which, by his own acknowledgment, tortured the heart of Swift. He wanted to the success of his political career that proud patience which the gods are said to love, and by virtue of which great men live down misappreciation, and hold out until they see themselves justified and hear the reproaches turn into cheers. But if Lord Durham's personal

career was in any way a failure, his policy for the Canadas was a splendid success. It established the principles of colonial government. There were undoubtedly defects in the construction of the actual scheme which Lord Durham initiated, and which Lord Sydenham, who died not long after him, instituted. The legislative union of the two Canadas was in itself a makeshift, and was only adopted as such. Lord Durham would have had it otherwise if he might; but he did not see his way then to anything like the complete federation scheme afterward adopted. But the success of the policy lay in the broad principles it established, and to which other colonial systems as well as that of the Dominion of Canada owe their strength and security to-day. One may say, with little help from the merely fanciful, that the rejoicings of emancipated colonies might have been in his dying ears as he sank into his early grave.

CHAPTER IV.

SCIENCE AND SPEED.

THE opening of the reign of Queen Victoria coincided with the introduction of many of the great discoveries and applications in science, industry, and commerce which we consider specially representative of modern civilization. A reign which saw in its earlier years the application of the electric current to the task of transmitting messages, the first successful attempts to make use of steam for the business of transatlantic navigation, the general development of the railway system all over these countries, and in the introduction of the penny-post, must be considered to have obtained for itself, had it secured no other memorials, an abiding place in history. A distinguished author has lately inveighed against the spirit which would rank such improvements as those just mentioned with the genuine triumphs of the human race, and has gone so far as to insist that there is nothing in any such which might not be expected from the self-interested contrivings of a very inferior animal nature. Amidst the tendency to glorify beyond measure the mere mechanical improvements of modern civilization, it is

natural that there should arise some angry questioning, some fierce disparagement of all that it has done. There will always be natures to which the philosophy of contemplation must seem far nobler than the philosophy which expresses itself in mechanical action. It may, however, be taken as certain that no people who were ever great in thought and in art wilfully neglected to avail themselves of all possible contrivances for making life less laborious by the means of mechanical and artificial contrivance. The Greeks were, to the best of their opportunity, and when at the highest point of their glory as an artistic race, as eager for the application of all scientific and mechanical contrivances to the business of life as the most practical and boastful Manchester man or Chicago man of our own day. We shall afterward see that the reign of Queen Victoria came to have a literature, an art, and a philosophy distinctly its own. For the moment we have to do with its industrial science; or, at least, with the first remarkable movements in that direction which accompanied the opening of the reign. This at least must be said for them, that they have changed the conditions of human life for us in such a manner as to make the history of the past forty or fifty years almost absolutely distinct from that of any preceding period. In all that part of our social life which is affected by industrial and mechanical appliances, the man of the latter part of the eighteenth century was less widely removed from the Englishman of the days of the Paston Letters than we are removed from the ways of the eighteenth century. The man of the eighteenth century travelled on land and sea in much the same way that his forefathers had done hundreds of years before. His communications by letter with his fellows were carried on in very much the same method. He got his news from abroad and at home after the same slow, uncertain fashion. His streets and houses were lighted very much as they might have been when Mr. Pepys was in London. ideas of drainage and ventilation were equally elementary and simple. We see a complete revolution in all these things. A man of the present day suddenly thrust back fifty years in life would find himself almost as awkwardly unsuited to the ways of that time as if he were sent back to the age when the Romans occupied Britain. He would

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find himself harassed at every step he took. He could do hardly anything as he does it to-day. Whatever the moral and philosophical value of the change in the eyes of thinkers too lofty to concern themselves with the common ways and doings of human life, this is certain at least, that the change is of immense historical importance; and that even if we look upon life as a mere pageant and show, interesting to wise men only by its curious changes, a wise man of this school could hardly have done better, if the choice lay with him, than to desire that the lines of his life might be so cast as to fall into the earlier part of this present reign.

It is a somewhat curious coincidence that in the year when Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke took out their first patent "for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through metallic circuit," Professor Morse, the American electrician, applied to Congress for aid in the construction and carrying on of a small electric telegraph to convey messages a short distance, and made the application without success. In the following year he came to this country to obtain a patent for his invention; but he was refused. He had come too late. Our own countrymen were beforehand with him. Very soon after we find experiments made with the electric telegraph between Euston Square and Camden Town. These experiments were made under the authority of the London and North-western Railway Company, immediately on the taking out of the patent by Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke. Mr. Robert Stephenson was one of those who came to watch the operation of this new and wonderful attempt to make the currents of the air man's faithful Ariel. The London and Birmingham Railway was opened through its whole length in 1838. The Liverpool and Preston line was opened in the same year. The Liverpool and Birmingham had been opened in the year before; the London and Croydon was opened the year after. The Act for the transmission of the mails by railways was passed in 1838. In the same year it was noted as an unpar alleled, and to many an almost incredible, triumph of human energy and science over time and space, that a locomotive had been able to travel at a speed of thirty-seven miles an hour.