for
Canada. It is the canker of social hate and jealousy preceding
revolution. If fifty per cent. of the population can be kept owning
and operating their own land, that social canker will never infect
Canada's national life as a whole.

[1] Thomas Jefferson desired such a rural future for the United States
and deplored the day of cities and industrialism. It came,
nevertheless.--THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW GOVERNED

I

Reference has been made to the facts that Big Business has up to the
present been unable to get control of the reins of government in Canada,
that the courts have been kept comparatively free of political influence
and that the doors of underground politics are not easily pried open by
corruption. Why is this? Canadians would fain take unction to
themselves that it is owing to their superior national integrity, but
this is nonsense.

Exuberant forest growth is always characterized by some fungus and dry
rot. How has Canada escaped so much of this fungus excrescence of
representative government? To get at the reason for this it is necessary
to trace back for a little space the historic growth of Canada's form of
government. We speak of Canada's constitution being the British North
America Act. As a matter of fact, Canada's constitution is more than an
act--more than a dry and hard and inflexible formula to which growth must
conform. Rather than plaster cast into which growing life must fit
itself, Canada's constitution is a living organism evolved from her own
mistakes and struggles of the past and her own needs as to the present.
Canada's constitution is not some pocket formula which some
doctrinaire--with apologies to France--has whipped out of his pocket to
remedy all ills. Canada's constitution is like the scientific data of
empirical medicine; it is the result of centuries' experiments, none the
less scientific because unconscious.

One need not trace the growth of government to the days prior to English
rule. When England took over Canada by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the
main thing to remember is that the French-Canadian was guaranteed the
free exercise of his religion. This--and not innate loyalty to an alien
government--was the real reason for Quebec refusing to cast in her lot
with the revolting American colonies. This was the reason for Quebec
remaining stanch in the War of 1812, and this is the reason for Quebec
to-day standing a solid unit against annexat