that some 30,000 rowdies who had assembled and organized in San
Francisco were preparing for a descent upon her poorly fortified
ports. Now was the turning point in the destinies of the country.
If the ministers at Ottawa had not stood firmly to their guns,
all our subsequent career, instead of being the golden century
of magnificent progress and peace that it has been, would have
been linked with all the turbulence and the alternate advance
and retrogression of the States.

A general election for the Dominion had been timed to take place
in the beginning of June, and the day was looked forward to by all
the noisy demagogues of Ontario as the day when the blood-thirsty
Tories were to be hurled from power by the people in righteous
wrath, and the country saved from the horrors of war. According to
these garrulous parties, Ontario, the wealthiest and most populous
Province of the seven, was to welcome the invaders, bidding them
enter Canadian territory in the name of the people, and plant the
Stars and Stripes wherever they halted. Bloodshed would thus be
avoided, and everyone would soon come round to the new order of
things and take to it naturally. Quebec might perhaps object,
"but what did a few handfuls of Frenchmen matter anyway."

On the day before the election, one party was full of boisterous,
bragging insolence; the other, still steadfast, firmly clinging
to what seemed a forlorn hope. Before the ending of another day
all was changed--a complete transformation scene had taken place.

When the morning journals on the election day appeared, their news
from the United States was such a terrible chapter of accidents as
has rarely fallen to the lot of journals to publish in one day. The