Page:The empire and the century.djvu/411

This extract may serve to secure an indulgent hearing for a good deal that has to be entered on the other side of the account. For there are directions in which England could do more for Canada than she is doing at present, partly in regard to feeling and sentiment, partly in more concrete matters. To take the latter first. The recent exposure by Sir George Drummond of certain postal anomalies, and their effects, is not considered in Canada to have been adequately met by Lord Stanley's reply that it would cost too much to remedy them. For example, the postage rate on newspapers, magazines, etc., from Canada to England is only ½ cent per pound, whereas that from England to Canada is no less than 8 cents per pound, and the rate to Canada from the United States is 1 cent per pound. In view of the flooding of the Canadian market by cheap American literature, or English periodicals dressed up with American advertisements, it was quite natural that the Canadian Senate should unanimously affirm the desirability of applying the preferential principle to the postal charges for the conveyance of inter-Imperial mails, and it may be hoped that when the British Post-Office has had a little more time to work out the question of ways and means, something will be done to conciliate Canadian opinion in a matter which bears so powerfully on the spread of Imperial feeling and sentiment. The fact ought not to be overlooked, though it seems so far to have escaped notice, that the Canadian Post-Office has to carry its mail matter on an average some 2,000 miles, as against, at the highest figure, an average of 200 miles in England. Receiving nothing for the delivery of the mails from outside, it therefore performs a more onerous service on every pound of mail matter. Again, more might probably have been done also by the home authorities in times past to direct the stream of emigration from the Old Country to Canada's shores. The consideration that British emigrants to Canada, besides receiving substantial land grants, do not need to make any change