THE CANADIAN QUESTION. (From the Times.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 414, 3 April 1850, Page 3

THE CANADIAN QUESTION. (From the Times.)

The news from Canada is deeply interesting, rather than painfully alarming. Those who exult in every development of colonial difficulties, and every fresh cause of vexation to the Colonial Office, will be delighted by the record of a movement which to lets hostile minds must supply matter for grave reflection and philosophical investigation. The movement to which we refer is one which tends to the dissolution rather than to the distuption of the Biilish Colonial Empire in North Amema. It is neither in-^piied by vindictiveness nor fraught with violence. It is earnest in its tone, but its earnestness partakes of the character of deliberativenesg ; it reasons —-even though it may reason wrongly—and proceed from incorrect premises to erroneous deduction!. It is on this account that the Montreal Address is entitled to a patient, nnd we were almost saying a respectful, attention at our hand}. It breathes no hostility against the British Crown and people; on the contrary, it emphatically vecords the cordial and kindly feeling of the Canadian people to both ; it makes no vehement protestations of affection for a democratic form of government, but simply rests its preference of republican institution! upon local and peculiar conditions ; it advises separation from England, as it suggests annexation to the United States, from the motives by which communities, not less than individuals, arc impelled — motives of self* interest and self- advancement. There was a time when so singular a document as this would have exposed its authors to the penaltie of [high treason, and the colony in which it was bronched to the calamities of civil war ; when every Englishman would have boiled with indisnation at the temerity which proposed to carry the presumption of language into action. But these days have passed away. We have been taught wisdom and experience ; i and the moat valuable as well as the most costly of our lessons has been taught by the barren issue of a precipitate conflict with a province, which from remonstrance proceeded to rebellion, and crowned rebellion with independence. We should not go to war for the sterile lionour of maintaining a reluctant colony in galling subjection ; we should not purchase an unwilling obedience by an outlay of treasure or of blood. If, indeed, with colonial dependence or independence there were indissolubly bound up metropolitan prosperity or decay, if it were tolerably clear that the preservation of colonial empire would ensure the preservation of metropolitan greatness, and that the latter would wane with the extinction of the formei — then auch suggestions, as the Montreal Address contains, ■would find no place in the discussions, no sympathy in the feelings of people in England. They would, one and all, identify their own interests and prosperity with that which their forefathers were content to regard for and by itself — viz., the supremacy of English power. But the difference between them and their forefatheis is, that they will count and pondar on that more vulgar balance of profit and los which' was forgotten by the generation which hailed the commencement and lamented the conclusion of the great American war. Is the retention of Canada profitable—will its loss be hurtful to England? is the question which Englishmen of the present day will put to themselves, as the converse of this question it that which Canadians arc already discussing on their tide. It must be admitted that the latter have grievances, though not ail equally oppressive, nor all of the same origin. They have been planted and thriven under protective laws. The laws are now abrogated, and abrogated~as the people of Canada have sense to see —without a chance of re-enactment. So far they suffer, in common with all our colonies, the effects of a bad and obsolete colonial system. The change, however, is made. The colonists know that what has been done will not be undone, and that the gram crops of Western Canada muit compete in the markets of England with the grain crops of the United States, of Poland, and of the whole world. They are suffering from the revulsion ; it has struck at their enterprise, their capital, and their energies. They say that they have lost all the advantnget , while they still suffer the biirdem, of colonists. Again, they complain of that which is to them a grievance in common with all other colonies. They are nobodies— they have no station, weight, or influence in imperial councils and imperial dignities. They are provincials of a country which is but little known and let* appreciated in Great Britain. Their aenators bare no voice, their statesmen no name in the Parliament and politics of England : their deliberations, their debates, and their divfsions are Ei beyond the limits of a semi-populated proir if known, known only to be coerced by the r ridiculed by the sneers of officials at home,

Again, they complain that, while on the other side of the American border, every sign of mercantile pros, perity and every indication of natural enterprise manifest themselves, on their side nil is poverty, stagnation and inertness; on the former, innumerable ratiroads tesselatp a country teeming with abundant harvests and busy with a thousand mils — while on the other side the sterility of an untilled soil is no less disheartening than the laziness of inactive hands, or the want of capital to employ them. Of these three grievances the two fornacx/ftrc real, the latter is only imaginary ; and of those wiuV^ are real, the first is only temporary. The prospeiity which was forced by protection will revive slowly, indeed, but surely, uuder the influence of competition. The energy and industry which have made the United States proiperous, mi!>ht have made Canada no less prosperous ; the British Constitution has not checked them-— the Colonial Office has not Btifled them. The English capital which flowed so readily into the thankless treasuries of Indiana and Pennsylvania would have gushed into the coffers of the Canadian merchants, and irrigated the barrenness of Canadian fields, had it not been f»r reasons for which none but Canadians are answernble. That this complaint ia overcharged we infer from the tenor of the whole evidence given by Canadnn proprietors of high chaiacter, before Lord Monteagle's Committee on Emigration. Canada has grown in prosperity, and considering the very late period of her colonizati m, and her large elements of the poorest Irish colonists —has grown beyond the hopes of her most sanguine well-wishers wiihin a very brief pmiod of time. What is wanting to increase this is English capital— the same capital which has multiplied the wealth of the neighbouring itates ; but which it would be absurd to suppose can only be introduced into her when she has ceased to be an English possession. The other com* piaiut is one which it is easier to deride than assuage. Our colonists — as such— enjoy only the distant and reflected sp'endours of imperial power and majesty. We have in this, as in other instances, forgotten the geneious but profound policy of ancient Koine, and have curtailed the privileges of those remote subjects —whose loyalty and whose carriage are the fuitherinost pillars on which rest the glories of the Biitish thione. To remedy this would require considerable alterations, not only in the system of our representative institution, but also in the laws of time, space, and locomotion. A proposal to change the one may ha considered nearly as Utopian as a pLin for revising the other. On the whole, th the question resolves itself into this — Would Canada .er herself without hurting England, by annex itjon to the Unitcii Sia'es ? Could we give up to a rivpl and agijiessive Republic a province as vast a3 France, without periling our power and damaging our piospenty? Could we give up Canada without affronting the brave loyalists of Nova Scotia, and losing the most vuluible harbours on the globe ? If Canada ceases to be British, must Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prinze Edward's Ishnd, cease to be Bntisu also ? Or is there no intermediate O'.uisc which should secure to the discontented colony independence, without foicing her into rivaliy or hostility ? Is it impossible to devise sucli a government — whether Royal, Imperial, or Republican — as, by consolidating the three North Ameiican provinces, would erect a huge breakwater between us and our nearest but most formidable lival ? All these aie questions of moment and importance ; but there is one question which takes precedence, even of the^e :— How tar are the sentiments contained in the Montreal Add i ess general and popular in Canada ? How hr are they merely the expression of a party spirit ? How far Canadian ? This is not only useful, but needful to ascertain. To take one single step without knowing this, would be to plunge, deliberately, into darkness and difficulty. Frantic as it was to wage a desultory and sanguinary war against the unanimous opinion of thirteen province!, it would be fatuous to fling away one great province, in blind submission to the niisunderstood dictates of an over-rated factiousness. Meanwhile—eie this question be solved — let ub congratulate ourselves on the reflection that the document which we have quoted, proves that the political training which England gives to her colonists is one which need neither make them ashamed of her, nor her of them; and that the future which awaits men thus trained, can never be obscure or dishonourable.