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THE OCEAN OF STORY: Being C. H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sāgara. Now Edited, with Introduction, Fresh Explanatory Notes and Terminal Essay, by N. M. PENZER, M.A., F.R.G.S., F.G.S. In 10 Volumes. Vol. vi. With a Foreword by A. R. WRIGHT, F.S.A. Privately Printed for Subscribers only. London: C. J. Sawyer, Ltd. In reviewing earlier volumes of this massive work the present writer has praised the beauty of this edition and the rich fund of Indian folklore it is providing. This volume again is full of all manner of amazing folk-tales, rich in every kind of interest. Saints and courtesans, vampires and animals like "the Parrot who was taught virtue by the King of Parrots," all kinds of strange and wonderful beings appear in these pages.

PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO EDUCATION: A Series of

Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Education. By the late JAMES WARD. Edited by G. DAWES HICKS, Professor of Philosophy in University College, London. Cambridge University Press. 10s. 6d. net.

These talks on the application of modern psychological conclusions to education should be extremely valuable to teachers. Dr. Ward discusses the problems of education with admirable lucidity, and the talks are enlivened by apt comment on the tendency of some teachers to apply the bare bones of a psychological method without grasping the principle underlying it.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS OF SOME GREAT THINKERS OF THE XVITH & XVIITH CENTURIES : A Series of Lectures. Edited by F. S. C. HEARNSHAW, M.A., LL.D. Harrap. 7s. 6d. net.

This, the third series of lectures delivered at King's College, London, on the subject of Social and Political Ideas, should be particularly helpful to the student, because amongst others who are dealt with by the competent authorities delivering the lectures are such well-known thinkers as Richard Hooker, Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. THE BRITISH NAVY IN ADVERSITY: A Study of the War of American Independence. By Captain W. M. JAMES, C.B., R.N. Longmans. 25s. net.

Captain James emphasises the mistaken political policy which had left the British Navy seriously weakened because the political weather seemed "set fair," only to have to struggle with inadequate ships in the suddenly arisen war with the American colonies. The author makes sufficient reference to the land operations to connect them with the naval movements, and his narrative is illustrated by a large number of admirable sketch-diagrams of the various battles. There are also full appendices giving the ships, guns and commanders engaged in each battle.

No. 500 will be published in April, 1927.

Printed in Great Britain by ROFFEY & CLARK, LTD., Croydon

The Edinburgh Review

APRIL, 1927

No. 500

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CANADA,

1867-1927

ON July 1 the oldest self-governing Dominion will celebrate

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sixty years of its history. For a hundred years before 1867 there had been in progress in British North America political experiments as rich as ever crowded a century, culminating in the achievement of responsible cabinet government. Famous names were added to the honour roll of political accomplishment -Durham, Bagot, Elgin, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Howe—and these became in turn sources of further political inspiration. The period closed in a great experiment. Out of petty colonial jealousies and barren provincial policies, out of the pressure of political and economic stagnation within, and under the wholesome, if tragic, lessons of the civil struggle of a kindred race without, French-Canadians and Anglo-Saxons made one of the greatest ventures of political faith in modern history-the application of British parliamentary institutions to a federation. Four provinces alone-Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick-went out in 1867 on the uncharted seas as the Dominion of Canada. Before the end of 1872 all the vast British territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific was included in the federation.

It is indeed true that the early political and territorial achievements of the makers of Canada would have remained small and barren had not their work inspired men of vision and of hope in other fields. In the wake of the statesmen came the railway builders-mighty men, whose faith moved mountains; the agricultural scientists, whose researches turned the despised and

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rejected western prairies into one of the richest granaries in the world; the telephone and telegraph men, whose miles and miles of wires robbed isolation of its terrors. Nor must we forget humbler folk. The schoolmaster, the parson and the priest kept alive and handed on the traditions of French and Anglo-Saxon culture to the ever-advancing line of pioneers, who in turn justified by their perseverance and endurance those who had risked their political and economic reputations in the great adventure. All these walked by faith. That they were perfect no one would claim. That there were grave defects and errors in judgment and in methods, no one would deny. Nothing, however, is easier than to rake up the records of shortcomings, and we can well afford to neglect them and to say that perhaps nowhere else has there been within sixty years such an extraordinary development.

Indeed, long before there was anything approaching national fulfilment a significant thing happened. Federation was still young when a note was heard, the significance of which has been obscured. Men began to speak of a Canadian national feeling and to think and write of Canada in terms of a political entity. In other words, the confidence of those who from 1820 to 1850 won responsible government, and of those who from 1859 to 1872 worked to extend that principle to a federation, was at once carried over into the political life of the new Dominion. The members of this "Canada First" group, as they were called, have too often been lightly dismissed as dreamers and theorists. As we look back to-day there can be no doubt that their faith in Canadian nationhood was an act of symptomatic insight. British North America carried into federation the creative principle of self-government; and faith in it and in its silent but inevitable developments has conditioned all our progress. The political development of the Dominion thus occupies a fundamental place in any review of the past sixty years, and it is well at once to lay emphasis on the important fact that almost every step has been taken in the light of political realism. Of course, we have not been without minds obsessed with doctrine, but the remarkable political advances, both within and without, have almost uniformly owed their origin to practical demands, and have been woven into the national web of constitutional and institutional life by practical hands. We have thus escaped all the dangers which

lie hidden in a priori politics. The fruition of the self-government which we inherited in 1867 as a federation has come as a slow realistic evolution in answer to political needs and mundane aspirations. As a general rule we have arrived at the political theory after the political event.

The new Dominion was at first far from autonomous, even in domestic affairs. Legislation was still subject to disallowance by the British government. The Governor-General was specially instructed to reserve any Bills dealing with certain specifically enumerated subjects, and he possessed the power of pardon, a prerogative no longer enjoyed by the Crown in England. Immigration from Great Britain was not under Canadian control; there was no Supreme Court; and in international affairs Canada had little or no voice. These limitations did not, it is true, cause much concern to the proverbial man in the street, but political stirrings were abroad, and it was singularly fortunate for Canada that their earliest clear-cut expression should have been made by Edward Blake, whose sober judgment and balanced reasoning laid foundations in those early days which have proved of inestimable value.

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Blake, as Minister of Justice, practically created the Supreme Court of Canada, which has, on the whole, been a remarkable success, as it has lent dignity and confidence to the Canadian judiciary. More remarkable, however, was Blake's work in the executive sphere. He saw, in the commissions and instructions issued to the governors, limitations which were antiquated, misleading and positively charged with friction. Not merely were whole classes of subjects peculiarly Canadian fenced off for consideration in England, but the governors were left free to exercise prerogatives, whether or no the Canadian cabinet approved. Here began that régime of political realism above referred to. In 1875, Lord Dufferin, on his own independent judgment, commuted the death sentence on a rebel. An acute crisis developed, and Blake visited England as a practical-minded man whose guiding principle was to seek the removal of possible executive dangers. He knew the history of British North America too well not to have learned that here had lain the fundamental cause of the bitter political struggles in the past. In due course the enumeration of reserved subjects was abandoned and the prerogative of pardon was brought within ministerial control.

Much more interesting, however, than the actual result of Blake's activities was his approach to the problem. He declared that the future would be mortgaged if England continued to deal with Canadian affairs as had been the custom with those of small and separate colonies. The conditions of development must be built on "the fullest freedom of political government." Since Blake's day there has been no friction between a governor and the federal legislature, and none over the prerogative of pardon. Indeed, in spite of law and technicalities, there grew up in Canada a widespread belief in the convention that a governor-general should always follow the advice of his ministers. The principle was laid down in unambiguous terms by Sir J. A. Macdonald in 1879, and Sir Robert Borden was emphatic that it was the guiding executive rule. It is true that the governor continued to retain the power to dismiss his ministers, to ask for their resignation, to refuse a dissolution, to reserve Bills. Dufferin asked for Macdonald's resignation in 1873, but wisely recalled his commands when Tupper pointed out to him that such an action would rob him of universal respect, since it would inevitably be interpreted as signifying that he had become "head of the Liberal party." From that date down to 1926, when an awkward situation arose, which will be dealt with presently, there were no difficulties between the formal and the real executive governments. And not a little credit must be given to the practical commonsense of Blake and Tupper, who realised—not, indeed, as fully as we do to-day-that constitutional right was to become a great solvent in the rigid world of constitutional law.

But, though Blake was an ardent-indeed, a passionatebeliever in Canadian autonomy, he never demanded complete and full autonomy merely to satisfy theory, merely to add another ornament to the shield of self-government. Autonomy, as wide as possible, was with him a fundamental necessity, for two important and inseparable reasons: first, because the removal of possible friction in the political machine would help to rob the future of its political terrors and would give confidence and courage to Canadian statesmen; secondly, because the widest application of autonomy meant to Blake a guarantee of the continuance of the British Empire. In this connection it is not entirely idle to recall that Blake was willing to break with his own political party when he feared that its economic policy might endanger Canada's

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