where decisions were made regardless of fixed terms, it was difficult, lacking the latter, to demonstrate the decisions. Finally, it needed a strong mind to think without the aid of syllogistic rules and the registering facilities which a system of propositions afford. But these have been found so treacherous in complicated questions that syllogism and deduction have been made the object of the greatest outcries in science. Bacon's revolt against them made our civilization. Locke exalted over them external and internal experience-induction and common sense. The later history of logic is chiefly that of defining their exact place. Ueberweg and Mill conclude that our ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is its agreement with the truth of things. Where syllogistic method, however, most conspicuously fails is in great and complex questions in which there are processes of co-ordination— of reasoning at the same moment on many interweaving lines of thought. Here the method of Genius, if in proportion to the strength, delicacy, and accustomedness of the mind, supposing it to have all necessary material, has greatly the advantage. In the hands of one like Christ, it practically amounts to Reason rejecting the shackles of logical form, and making straight at conclusions which experience subconsciously endorses. To reason about the world and the soul, and their Creator, he had not to know and track out all the theories which could be made into words on those subjects, but rose to lofty perceptions of the divine, just as he did of righteousness -by diligently pondering the world of actualities, and with extraordinary clearness of sight and good judgment refusing whatever was false to them.

When the grounds of faith are rightly analyzed it will, I think, be

discovered that Christianity has a firm, dogmatic base, as well as practical efficiency. The method of Genius should govern till the method of Science has completely subdued the field. Efficiency and reasonableness constitute for it a solid assurance of pernianence. To the man who believes on and trusts in God, its claims of doctrine and plan are plain and easy. And for the truth about God, he is logical in trusting Christ.

Two rules of practice also must Conservatism teach: To reverently trust the old thinkers, at least till we understand their subjects; and never to reject a belief till it has completely fulfilled the conditions of disbelief. And a further lesson is, that having once, by wide and careful independent study, or by deliberate choice of leaders, reasoned out our faith, we should drop that chilling attitude and live what God has taught us. Very little of Christianity, except the form of its science, is destined to change. Instead of theorizing we must, as Christ did, realize. Deduction must give way to a new inspection of facts. Instead of Direct Inspiration and the Divinity of Christ, we must attain to the ancient truths they used to mean-the convictions, namely, that all good things are more nearly the final purpose of God ; and that a man like Christ is a being infinitely higher than the average man. In place of the Holy Ghost we should feel the communing presence of our Father Himself. Redemption will be no longer a bargain with Jehovah, but the willing sacrifice of Jesus for each, when he chose anguish and aзath rather than desert the truth which he believed would save the world. Of God, our ideas must be practical and not analytical-what He is to our helplessness-to each OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.

of sneers and detraction, generally grossly untrue, by her own kith and kin, Englishmen born and bred? Why, of all things, should she be charged with a desire to be annexed to the United States?

It is stated by the Pall Mall Gazette (10th October) that hardly anybody in Canada wants to maintain the British connection, but a small knot of professional politicians and others who have a fancy for knighthoods and the like. That Canadian farmers and merchants feel 'isolated' on this continent. That England is quite mistaken in supposing that the Canadian people in general care to remain under her flag, and that the feeling in favour of annexation is every day growing stronger.

If this be so, how is it that we who live in Canada hear so little of it? Why does no Canadian public man, no Canadian public print, give voice to the desires of the people? Who has heard of these desires, how have they been expressed, and what authority has the Pall Mall Gazette for making such a charge?

The matter being thus forced upon us in such a strange and unnatural way by Englishmen, it behoves us to consider what we should gain by annexation, and what we should lose. We might gain by the application to our resources of that enterprize, and adaptation of means to ends, which so eminently distinguish our neighbours; but we may take a leaf out of their book in these ways without annexation. What we should lose is plain. The first result would be an Indian war in our North-West, with its fifty years of horrors and atrocities, and its effects for generations to come on our people's character in the forms of falsehood, truculence and cruelty, and disregard of human life and suffering. Then we should exchange our present admirable political machinery, with its responsible ministry, for an executive utterly irresponsible, and our present equitable administration of

justice, sound public opinion, and comparative safety of life and person, for the state of things with which the American press keeps us familiar. As to our feeling 'isolated' on this continent, have we not half the continent to ourselves, ample railway accommodation, seaports, and a mercantile marine ranking the fourth in the world? We are no more isolated than the Americans or anybody else.

The Gazette thinks that because one tortuous stream, the Red River of the north, compared with whose course a writhing snake is a mathematical straight line, runs from American territory into Manitoba, the produce of Minnesota and Dakota should 'follow the water power.' Said produce thinks otherwise and goes just the other way. No produce meant to pay interest on capital will ever go meandering through the bends of the Red River. But this is about as sensible as the rest of the Gazette's talk about Canada, and is a specimen of the average acquaintance possessed by Englishmen with the geography of their premier colony.'

Our independent yeomen are as democratic as the most radical of men could wish, democratic enough to know that the institutions under which they live and thrive could not well be made more democratic than they are, and sensible enough to prefer a democracy which has 'broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent,' to a crude and cobbled democracy, whose imperfections show themselves every day, and under which people's liberties are interfered with, in ways no Englishman would submit to in his own island, and certainly no Canadian in his own Canada.

It is an open question, whether we should get on faster, even in a material way, under the stars and stripes, than we do now. Since Confederation, fourteen years ago, our imports have increased 82 per cent. and our exports 107 per cent., against 52 per cent. and 51 per cent., in the case of those of

the United States. The capital of our banks has increased 97 per cent., their circulation 225 per cent., their assets 179 per cent, The deposits in Savings. Banks have increased 1015 per cent., and the Railway mileage 250 per cent. We are doing pretty well as we are.

But it takes two to make a bargain, and, in the present case, it would take three. Supposing we wanted annexation, would England calmly resign her control of half the Amerian continent, with its vast possibilities of usefulness to herself? Her two vital necessities are food and markets. America and Russia give her the former; but they try all they can not to give her the latter. Now, every man in Canada consumes many times as much of British manufactures (a late writer in the Nineteenth Century says, twenty times as much) as he would if he lived in the States. So if Canada, as no doubt she soon will, proves able to supply England with food, England can pay for that food with her manufactures, and keep her people employed and comfortable, instead of paying Russia and America largely by transfer of securities, and at the same time keeping her people half their time unemployed and uncomfortable. As compared with foreign markets, the colonial demand is steady, and at the same time it increases at a far faster rate. And there is another consideration. Will England allow the four millions of Canada, and all her other subjects, who may cross the Atlantic, to follow the millions already in the Republic, who have sworn to fight the Republic's battles against all princes and rulers, especially the Queen of England?' Should Canada ever make any serious attempt at entering upon Commercial Union with the States, to the exclusion of England, I fancy she will find the present silken rein exchanged for something more like a curb of steel; that is, if England is mindful either of her interests or her honour.

I can only account for the English

notion that Canada wants annexation, by supposing that Englishmen feel that their snubs, insults and neglect ought, by this time, to have thoroughly destroyed all attachment on the part of Canadians to the British connection. English opinion has been too much influenced by the reports of gentlemen, who, at a loss to dispose of their daily twenty-four hours of elegant leisure in Canada, have gone home and pronounced her no country for a gentleman.' What are rich plains and forests, endless waterways, mountains of iron, and continents of coalfields ? In one province, a farmer shot a fox, when English gentlemen, even guardsmen, were scampering after him. In another province, the salmon won't take the fly. Why keep such a country? What can a gentleman do in it, you know? And so territory after territory has been handed over to the Republic, to confront us in these days in the shape of mighty and rival States, But now English statesmen, manufacturers, farmers and labourers, are looking abroad, thinking of other things than salmon and foxes, and seeking, not a country for a gentleman, but for a man.

Mr. Goldwin Smith has recently, in the English journals, had a good deal to say about Canada, and the railway policy of her Government, For instance, in a late number of the Contemporary, he asks us to believe that the Intercolonial Railway can only be run at an annual loss of half a million dollars. When Mr. Smith wrote, there were figures at his command, showing the loss on running this line for the last year, whose returns were then published, to be only $97,000, not $500,000, and this loss was converted into a small profit in the following year. Thus do people dress up facts which, naked and not ashamed, would spoil points they want to make. The Intercolonial and Pacific Railways,' says Mr. Smith, 'ought not to be built, because parts of them go through unproductive re