door, and yet she is united in declining to trade with them, and in desiring to trade with communities many of which are thousands of miles away. The forces which have influenced her are not the natural forces of geography or contiguity, but the sentimental force of nationality and the artificial force of commercial arrangements—commercial arrangements, that is to say, in the widest sense of the word, either such as are imposed from without, like the old colonial system, or such as are entered into voluntarily, like the former reciprocity with the States and the existing one-sided preference with the United Kingdom, or tariff barriers erected by foreign countries, like the McKinley and Dingley tariffs.
The great merit of Canadian statesmanship lies in the recognition of the potency of these two forces, and of the importance of getting them to act together; a commercial treaty is rendered far more durable if it is based on a common nationality.
