Canada Under the Administration of Lord Lorne

to make—has now become the most painful spectacle known to us. The fetters which bind our parties grow stronger; and from day to day the partizan teaches himself to look less beyond the circle that bounds him. It is in deference to the needs of such a hard-and-fast combination that men stoop to actions which, if done in private life, would bring upon them the reproach and scorn of every upright man. In the preface of a book is not the place where these pitiable occurrences could be discussed with satisfaction, but, as a case in point, let me refer to that most odious plot to defeat the Ontario Ministry disclosed in Toronto a few days ago. Deeper and deeper are we sinking in the mire of public evil-doing; within the parties that we have there is to be seen no hope; and the few honest men that we possess among the politicians have lost heart. Most of the elders among our public men have become hardened in offence, seeking only to forward personal ends, careful only to conceal their methods; and the rectitude which the younger ones exhibit diminishes from year to year by force of the influences surrounding them and by the inexorableness with which the leaders demand allegiance. If there are among us, then, any men who sincerely love their country they must see that the time is now come for them to enter the field and stem the forces that have degraded, and that threaten to overwhelm, the public life of the country. In a Third Party alone is there salvation: not a third party upon a sheet of foolscap, or in the ante-room of a lecture hall, but in a party led by a body of strong, honest, patriotic men, who are conversant with the evil methods which party has made its own, who will appeal to the intelligence and the moral sense of the country,

and who will organize themselves in every Province of the Dominion. If such a combination come forward, depend upon it they shall not long lack a powerful following. Men too long galled by the party bridle, and grown sick of the mire in which their masters have for so many years compelled them to walk, will leave the traces; opinion which refuses fealty to either side now will surround them with enthusiasm, and there will be found in the next parliament a body of representatives sitting between the two factions potent enough to thwart any evil projected by the stronger, and that will in the near future see disappear from the scenes a school of politicians which, notwithstanding its abilities and its service to Canada, has long degraded public life, and exercised the power in its hands to further personal and unworthy ends.

I ought not to close without expressing my obligations to Mr. Henry J. Morgan for the value that has been to me that most excellent year-book of his, the Dominion Annual Register, in recording and discussing the political and social events of Lord Lorne's administration.

Libros