y have, on the other
hand, done nothing to allay them. We have never attempted to secure the
good will of the Canadians in any respect; and we have never done
anything to establish better relations. Yet unless such better relations
are established, the United States will lose an indispensable ally in
the making of a satisfactory political system in the Western hemisphere
while at the same time the American people will be in the sorry
situation for a sincere democracy of having created only apprehension
and enmity on the part of their nearest and most intelligent neighbors.

Under such circumstances the very first object of the foreign policy of
the United States should be to place its relations with Canada on a
better footing. There was a time when this object could have been
accomplished by the negotiation of a liberal treaty of commercial
reciprocity. If the commercial policy of the United States had been
determined by its manifest national interest instead of by the interests
of a group of special industries, such a treaty would have been signed
many years ago. A great opportunity was lost when the negotiations
failed early in the eighties, because ever since Canada has been
tightening her commercial ties with Great Britain; and these ties will
be still further tightened as Canada grows into a large grain-exporting
country. But while it will be impossible to make an arrangement as
advantageous as the one which might have been made twenty-five years
ago, the national interest plainly demands the negotiation of the most
satisfactory treaty possible at the present time; and if the special
interests of a few industries are allowed to stand indefinitely in the
way, we shall be plainly exhibiting our incompetence to carry out an
enlightened and a truly national foreign policy. We shall be branding
ourselves with the mark of a merely trading democracy which is unable to
subordinate the selfish interests of a few of its citizens to the
realization of a policy combining certain commercial advantages with an
essential national object. Just as the maintenance of the present high
protective tariff is the clearest possible indication of the domination
of special over national interests in domestic politics, so the resolute
opposition which these industries show to the use of the tariff as an
instrument of a national foreign policy, suggests that the first duty of
the United States as a nation is to testify to its emancipation from