the Isthmus of Panama, if not to Cape Horn, has been the ambition of
the Great Republic--and it is a dangerous ambition for the rest of the
world. We have seen its effects in all our treaties. We have always
been asked _for land_. We gave up Michigan after the war of 1812.
We gave up that noble piece, the "Aroostook" country, now part of the
State of Maine, under the Ashburton Treaty in 1841. We have, again,
been shuffled out of our boundary at St. Juan on the Pacific, under an
arbitration which really contained its own award. The Reciprocity
Treaty was put an end to, in 1866, by the United States, not because
the Great West--who may govern the Union if they please--did not want
it, but because the Great West was cajoled by the cunning East into
believing that a restriction of intercourse between the United States
and the British Provinces would, at last, force the subjects of the
Queen to seek admission into the Republic. So it was, and is and will
be; and the only way to prevent aggression and war was, is, and will
be, to "put our foot down." Not to cherish the "peace-in-our-time"
policy, or to indulge in the half-hearted language, to which I shall
have hereafter to allude--but to combine and strengthen the sections of
our Colonial Empire in the West--to give to their people a greater
Empire still, a nobler history, and a prouder lot: a lot to
_last_, because based upon institutions which have stood, and will
stand, the test of time and trouble. Unfortunately we have had a
"little England" party in our country. A Liberal Government,
immediately following the Act of Confederation, took every red-coat out
of the Dominion of Canada, shipped off, or sold, the very shot and
shell to any one, friend or foe, who chose to buy: and the few guns and
mortars Canada demanded were charged to her "in account" with the ruth
of the miser. If the Duke of Newcastle had been a member of that
Cabinet such a miserable policy never could have been put in force; but
he was _dead_. I venture to think that the whole people of