industry of others brought into the country by the hope of making homes
and fortunes in the New World, opened up, in the course of years, the
fertile lands of the West. Then two provinces were formed in the East
and West, divided by the Ottawa River, and representative government was
conceded to each. The struggles of the majority to enlarge their
political liberties and break the trammels of a selfish bureaucracy
illustrate the new mental vigour that was infused into the French
Canadian race by the concession of the parliamentary system of 1792. The
descendants of the people who had no share whatever in the government
under French rule had at last an admirable opportunity of proving their
capacity for administering their own affairs, and the verdict of the
present is, that, on the whole, whatever mistakes were committed by
their too ardent and impulsive leaders, they showed their full
appreciation of the rights that were justly theirs as the people of a
free colonial community. Their minds expanded with their new political
existence, and a new people were born on the banks of the St. Lawrence.

At the same time the English-speaking communities of Upper Canada and
the Maritime Provinces advanced in mental vigour with the progress of
the struggle for more liberal institutions. Men of no ordinary
intellectual power were created by that political agitation which forced
the most indifferent from that, mental apathy, natural perhaps to a new
country, where a struggle for mere existence demands such unflagging
physical exertion. It is, however, in the new era that followed the
Union that we find the fullest evidence of the decided mental progress
of the Canadian communities. From that date the Canadian Provinces
entered on a new period of industrial and mental activity. Old
jealousies and rivalries between the different races of the country
became more or less softened by the closer intercourse, social and
political, that the Union brought about. During the fierce political