This is the highest point our exports ever reached, and it may be interesting to some to learn, that the portion of them which was the actual produce of Canada, amounted to $62,944,027. The portion not of our own production, was of the value of $12,798,182, and the balance is made up of coin and bullion and estimated short returns.

The details not having yet been published, we are not in a position to say in which classes of our exports the expansion has taken place. But the fact that they have augmented in value to the extent of eight millions and a half of dollars in twelve months, proves that the sources of our production are in a healthy condition.

When we contrast the imports and exports of the year, however, our task is not so pleasing. During the twelve months the former exceeded the latter by no less than $25,065,232! Nor is this excess of imports exceptional. In 1869-70 the difference was trifling, but in all the other years since Confederation, our importations have greatly exceeded our exports :

In 1867-8 there was an excess of $14,417,418 6,927,389

1,240,849

In 1868-9

66

66

12,773,864

We do not consider the "balance of trade" so material to national prosperity as some do. But it must be admitted that sixty millions is a large balance to accrue against a country like Canada in five years, and it cannot be unimportant that every penny of it either has been, or will have to be, paid, in gold or its equivalent.

The great demand for Sterling Exchange to meet obligations maturing in Great Britain and abroad, is one of the principal causes of the monetary stringency which has for some months existed. Other causes have no doubt also been at work, but the unusual excess of imports over exports for several successive years, is, directly or remotely, the prime source of difficulty. There is every reason to believe the financial pressure which obtains will be only temporary. It already shows signs of relaxing. But it has been severely felt in many quarters, and it requires no great foresight to foresee that, if the causes of irritation go on increasing, the time is not far distant when we shall have a money famine more aggravated than anything we have yet experienced.

Whilst some features of our trade for

1871-2 invite sharp criticism, the returns are, as a whole, highly creditable to Canada, and testify that we are making as great, if not greater progress, than at any former period in our history. The year under review has been one of increased activity in almost every department of Canadian trade, and although some clouds have appeared on the horizon, there can be no doubt that the country generally has added materially to its wealth and prosperity.

The annual trade of the Dominion may hereafter be set down at two hundred millions of dollars. That is something, let me say in conclusion, to which four millions of people may justly point with some degree of pride and satisfaction.

:

a

to say upon a matter on which we had occasion slightly to touch before; we mean the impersonality of journalism. Not in our own interest only, but in that of Canadian journalism in general, we must protest against attempts to deprive the publishers of this journal of the literary assistance necessary for their enterprise by denouncing personally writers supposed to be employed in the preparation of the editorials. It has been remarked by good judges, and we believe with perfect truth, that in the respect paid to the privilege of editorial impersonality in England, and the habitual disregard of it in the United States, is to be found a principal cause of the different character of journalism and the different position of the journalist in the two countries. If used for malicious or corrupt purposes, the privilege is justly forfeited but otherwise we deprecate its violation either from the vulgar love of personalities, or under the impulse of that tyrannical petulance which cannot endure an honest difference of opinion, but upon the slightest contradiction breaks through all rules of justice and courtesy to get at the object of its spleen. There are men of mature years and experience who have not yet learnt the first lesson which a boy learns at an English public school-who cannot allow you to disagree with them about the theory of government or the spots on the sun without falling on you as though you had cheated them at cards. The practice is unchivalrous as well as injurious to journalism, because the writer assailed cannot defend himself without a breach of the confidential relations which every manager of a journal must form with his staff, and the maintenance of which is indispensable to the profession. We repeat that we speak in the general

selves alone.

That this Magazine has abandoned the national character assumed in its original programme, and become the mere organ of personal sentiments or designs, will not be easily believed by any one who has noticed the variety of opinions expressed in it, the different parties from which its contributors have been drawn, and the comments made on its articles by the press on both sides. It is the organ of nothing but perfect freedom of speech, and it will do its best to guard against any attempt to muzzle discussion or set up among us a narrow tyranny of opinion. Genuine Liberalism consists in thinking independently yourself and encouraging independent thought in others, not in disguising the arbitrary temper of ultra-Toryism under conventional rags of Liberal sentiment. The subjects chosen for our article on Current Events are simply those which happen to be prominent at the time. At the great Grit banquet and in the presence of the chief of the party, who occupied the chair, Mr. Blake, adverting to the Treaty of Washington and the discussions to which it was giving rise in the mother country, declared that Canada would no longer allow her interests to be disposed of as they are under the present system of diplomatic tutelage, and proclaimed "the reorganization of the Empire on another basis"-in other words Imperial Confederation. Additional significance was given to his words by the fact that he had recently returned from intercourse with public men in England, and that a strong manifesto from the Confederation party had just appeared in Fraser's Magazine. We accordingly made some remarks on the subject of Imperial Confederation, which the organ of the Grit party re-published and made the

subject of an attack, suppressing the paragraph which showed that the question had been raised by Mr. Blake and substituting a caption of its own, "Canadian Independence," for "Imperial Confederation," which was given in our advertisement.

Mr. Blake had good reason for raising the question. If the agitation which was carried on for several months with the utmost violence against the Treaty of Washington had been successful, a serious crisis in our relations with the mother country would certainly have ensued. The soft language held now is entirely at variance with that held a year ago, and the pretence that the agitation was directed merely against Mr. Gladstone is, to say the least, transparently weak. It will be in the memory of our readers that indignation was directed against the general policy of the Home Government with regard to diplomatic questions in which Canada was concerned. And who is Mr. Gladstone? Is he not the constitutional representative of the British nation, with a majority of a hundred in the House of Commons ?

Not only such a question as that of the Washington Treaty, but any one of a hundred other possible events might bring upon the existing system such a strain as only perfect soundness could bear. Europe is full of great armaments, of revolutionary forces re-awakening to activity, of vast and unquiet ambitions. England may any day be forced into a war with a power able to cope with her at sea, and to appear in force in Canadian waters. In the first Russian war the Russian navy was shut up in port by the combined fleets. In the second Russian war it may get out; and it appears certain that had England interposed on behalf of France, as by a curious coincidence both the ultraConservative and the ultra-Radical party wished her to do, there would have been a second Russian war. On the other hand had the French Emperor's plot for the annexation of Belgium ripened, the Empire might have been involved in a war with France,

and this with more than a million of Frenchmen in the midst of the Canadian Confederation. The enforcement of the Genevan rules again may, as Lord Salisbury says, lead to awkward questions between the Home Government and the Colonies. It is wrong gratuitously to disturb organic questions, but it is also wrong to hoodwink a nation. Some time before the Franco-German war, General Trochu published a work pointing out the defects of the French military system and its liability to break down if pitted against such a system as the German. He was denounced as unpatriotic, silenced, removed from high command; and France marched with undisturbed self-complacency to Gravelotte and Sedan.

Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the accurate man, the man of facts par excellence of the English Conservative party is, it seems, in a state of ignorance about Canada so culpable as to call for the most unmeasured vituperation. Mr. Hughes, an enthusiastic Colonialist, who visited Canada the other day, as was currently believed with the intention of placing his own son here, drew down upon himself, by the same defect, language which might not have been inappropriate if he had stolen a sheep. We can hardly flatter ourselves that Colonial politicians and journalists are better informed about the general concerns of the Empire than Imperial ministers and statesmen. In the midst of this dense night of mutual ignorance, with storms muttering in the distance, is it a crime on the part of Mr. Blake or any one else to ask whether the anchorage is safe? But we pass to the events of the day.

By the granting of the Pacific Railway Charter the country is fairly committed to an enterprise which, if it succeeds and fulfils the expectations of its advocates, will not only connect together the scattered and disjointed territories belonging to the British Crown, but open a new highway to the commerce of the world; which, if it fails, or en