CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVII, Issue 6507, 4 January 1882, Page 5

CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.

A telegram appeared ia the Colonial papers a few weeks ago, stating that the “ Canadians were agitating for independence.” The following cable message from London to New York throws some light on the subject. It is dated Not. 13: —A controversy is going cn between Professor Gold win Smith and Sir Francis Hincks. The former denounces the policy of England in retaining Canada as “jingoism,” and points out with great force that the scheme of imperial federation and imperial zollverein is madness, as Cam da cannot be divorced from her natural associations and her natural markets and hitched on to England as a sort of donkey engine. Sir Francis Hinck*, the loyal British pensioner that he is, declares there is no wish for annexation in Canada. I think, however, that no small proportion of the fizzing lovalty of the Canadians is assumed for a purpose. When Sir John Macdonald comes here he telle at every opportunity that Canada has as many as 650,000 men ready to spill their last drop of blood for tho old flag, and then he asks for an appropriation—in other words, a new loan—to ba squandered in railways and canals which do not pay, and which ultimately, like the new Canada Pacific, fall under American control, or, like the Intercolonial Bailway, are rendered useless by shorter routes. Unless I have been grievously misinformed, a plebiscite for annexation is being boomed in the city of Montreal that would astonish Sir Francis Hincks, and in Western Canada, where the people are rubbing shoulders with the Americans in their everyday business, the feeling in favour of annexation is growing, although to be an avowed annexationist is not fashionable. I am told, also, by English friends who have just returned from the North-west, where they had every opportunity of ascertaining the drift of public opinion, that the annexation feeling is rapidly growing there. The new Canadian tariff compels the settlers to send for their farm machinery and other goods all the way to Ontario, instead of to Minnesota. The Canadian Government is handing over the territory to a brood of monopolists, public and private, and the Canada Pacific Bailway Company, which is the St Paol, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Company, has secured privileges, and is exercising a tyranny that is both retarding settlement and exciting the peoolo against Canadian rule. The older provinces are peopled in the main by Old Country-men, who cling to British institutions, but the North-West contains a motley crowd, that cares more for its own national welfare than for anv sentimentalities.