vital interest is the policing of the highway of the ocean. Once that highway loses its security, the knell of British as of Canadian prosperity is sounded. That both countries should combine in the task of defending it is the essential guarantee of their partnership.

But to any such scheme that French section to which we have referred is ready to show the most relentless hostility, and to back that hostility by the most flagrant misrepresentation, framed to catch the ears of the unthinking habitant, who is taught that a naval contribution means the kidnapping of his sons, who are to be shipped across the ocean to fight England's battles.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier has at all times met with wholehearted welcome from the British nation, and it is no business of ours to interfere with the party politics of Canada or to obtrude our sympathy on either side. We can only express our fervent hope that Sir Wilfrid Laurier may continue to command that welcome by the patriotism that is above party. We would not have presumed even to express that hope, were it not that some of his most recent utterances have stirred deep hostility in Canada, and have given to ourselves strong searchings of heart. Reciprocity with the United States has surely been sufficiently exposed to render it unwise for any Canadian leader to revive it as Sir Wilfrid Laurier has done. Still less can it be expedient at this moment to inflame the

bitterness of racial antipathy by appeals to prejudice.

A grave task lies before Mr Borden and his colleagues, in deciding how Canada may contribute to the great scheme of Imperial Defence. We would be disposed to make little account of exact proportion, and not to be too careful as regards any balance on one side or the other in the budget of expense. But we cannot but urge that naval defence must

rest upon a single scheme, and that subdivisions and divergent counsels spell disaster: and further, that organisation during peace must be the basis of organisation for war. It may not be amiss to suggest that practical experience would soon tell against any such morcellement, and that the personnel of a Canadian navy would soon protest against any scheme which confined them to Canadian waters, and bounded their ambition by the command of a Canadian contingent.

We are unwilling, however, to say anything which may increase the difficulty of the task which now faces the Canadian Government. We have full confidence in the patriotism and in the Imperial instincts of Mr Borden. But two things are essential to his success, and they must be supplied by His Majesty's Government at home. In the first place, Canada must be given a voice in consultations upon Imperial policy, in proportion to her contribution. This must be given in no No specious

grudging spirit. offers of con

THE grave resolution of Ulster to refuse, in all circumstances and at all hazards, the gift of Home Rule, which is no gift, has done something more than kill a monstrous Bill. It has shown us a path to reality. For years we have been bidden by our demagogues to live upon words. Rhetoric has done the work of thought and act. Silly catchwords, inspiring vague and evil passions, have been considered the chief duty of statesmanship. Law and honour, the decencies of life, the future of the country, have been gaily put up to auction and knocked down to the men who seemed to command the largest number of votes. For those who have any regard for political honesty and the pride of England the time which has elapsed since the fraudulent passage of the Parliament Bill has seemed like a nightmare. The nightmare is dissipated at last. Ulster has shown us a path to reality.

If Mr Asquith were to carry out the intention, of which he boasts, and place Home Rule upon the Statute Book, Ulster would forcibly reject it. It declines to be driven out of the Union. It will not initiate rebellion; it will oppose it when it is thrust most wickedly upon it. Were Home Rule passed, it would be passed only and solely by Mr Redmond and

his henchmen, by men who are pledged frankly and openly, everywhere save in the House of Commons, to set no limit to the aspirations of their "nation," to be content with nothing save complete independence. In the task of imposing this revolution upon Ulster, England has had no share.

The largest party in the House of Commons is united in opposition to its provisions. In brief, Ulster is to be enslaved by no other votes than the votes of the Redmondites and Molly Maguires, her declared enemies. If for an hour she submitted to so gross a tyranny she would lose the respect of honest men. She will not submit, and in determining thus to defend her honour and the liberty of her folk she has lifted our politics from the pit of verbose triviality into which they had fallen.

For it is triviality and triviality alone which stamps the words they dare no deeds of our statesmen. Mr Asquith is an advocate and no more. He speaks obediently to his brief. He is careful not to go beyond his instructions. In defending Mr Redmond and Mr Patrick Ford he quibbles like an attorney. Two days before Parliament met he addressed his constituents, and his talk was not of Home Rule but of tactics. Tactics, tactics, it is always tactics which

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engross him, and when he is tired of admiring his own own conduct of Mr Redmond's case, he falls heavily upon upon the tactics of his opponents. Principles, enthusiasms, ideals are not of the smallest interest to him. He does not understand them; he makes no attempt to expound or to criticise them. He credits the Unionist Party with the same ambition which animates him, of playing the attorney. And thus, with the case ever before his eyes, he charges them with "political blunders." Mr Chamberlain's campaign in favour of protection was a political blunder. To throw out the Budget of 1909 he considers "the most colossal error of tactics in our time." It is barren stuff, to be sure, such as no Prime Minister has ever yet served up as politics. And it is barren, because Mr Asquith, looking only at his brief, forgets that Mr Chamberlain is a man of strong principle, and that the House of Lords refused to vote for the Budget of 1909, because it put its duty before the indecent hope of a tactical advantage.

root principles of democracy, whatever they may be, do not require unquestioning obedience to a tyrannical Convention, which deliberates in seeret and does not permit a full discussion of its decrees. What has happened was clearly foreseen by all who had studied the history of politics. The abolition of the House of Lords, together with the payment of members, meant the total extinction of the House of Commons. The Cabinet, having purchased the absolute fidelity of its followers by its bribe of £400 a-head, believes itself supreme in the country. And Mr Asquith has not merely ensured the support of a slavish majority, he has enunciated the new theory that an Opposition which desires the extinction of a Bill has no right to discuss it. The guillotine and the kangaroo are not sufficient. They do not impose total silence. So the claim to pass Bills without comment must have its moral sanction, and nobody henceforth may attempt to amend a Bill unless he has first pronounced a formal acceptance of its principle. Did that fallacy, we wonder, grow at the root of democracy? Mr Bonar Law, at anyrate, had no difficulty in uprooting it. "I think," said he, "unlike Mr Asquith, that, after all, the country, and not the House of Commons, is the final Court of Appeal; and I claim that legitimate discussion, which does do what he says we have done-does show the absurdity of the Bill,-is as

necessary as any other form of discussion."

As we have said, there is an unreality in every word spoken by Mr Asquith. Mr Lloyd George approaches no more nearly to the facts of life. In the speech which he delivered in the House of Commons on the Home Rule Bill, he showed himself a mere strayling from the Mile End. He was pleased to be funny, to try his hand at the making of jests, and, like Sir Edward Carson, we "have not the least ambition to follow the right honourable gentleman in his foolery." He is as little capable of understanding the gravity of the situation as the advocate who is his leader. How should he, when his Iberian blood forbids him a sense of humour? At the very moment when he is doing his best to gag the only house of deliberation that is left us, he makes a speech against political animus. "I should be very sorry," he says, "to see the nation divided into two irreconcilable camps, with an unbridgable chasm between them, never co-operating as citizens for any common purpose. When political animus saturates our blood to that extent, you may depend upon it there is no health in us. It is never an edifying spectacle to look upon the devil reproving sin. But it must be clear to every one that if the nation is divided into two irreconcilable camps, as we devoutly hope it is, that division is mainly the work of the evangelist of Limehouse.

Mr

Lloyd George deliberately set out to create hatred, and with his trick of rhetoric to aid him he has succeeded. There is more ill-feeling in the country at the present moment than ever before, and the ill-feeling has not been mitigated by the secret inquiry into the land inaugurated by Mr Lloyd George, and trounced as it deserved to be trounced in the House of Commons by Mr Rawlinson. Το accept the challenge is the first duty of the Unionist party. Ill-feeling has been forced upon us, and we accept it. When we see our liberties infringed, and our country involved in ruin, merely that Mr Asquith may remain in office, and that Mr Lloyd George may pursue the career of self-interest sketched in a recent biography, there is no space or excuse for good-feeling. Any other country, save England, which suffers long and deeply, would have been in open rebellion long ago.

The reason why England is not in open rebellion is that in a dim way she sees the unreality of it all. Even if the Home Rule Bill passes the House of Commons, as Mr Redmond has ordered that it shall, it will still be a long way from coming into operation. In the first place, it will not carry with it the authority of the House of Lords; in the second, it will not be approved by the country. At the best, it will seem a maimed, truncated thing-a thing brought into being by the casual vote. of the odd man, who happens to be Mr Redmond, and sus