‘But,’ I argued over three thousand miles of country, ’all these are excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman.  It is true that in his own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall over each other to help and debauch and amuse him.  Here, General January will stiffen him up.  Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of the Family, but your manners and morals can’t be so tender as to suffer from a few thousand of them among your six millions.  As to the Englishman’s Socialism, he is, by nature, the most unsocial animal alive.  What you call Socialism is his intellectual equivalent for Diabolo and Limerick competitions.  As to his criticisms, you surely wouldn’t marry a woman who agreed with you in everything, and you ought to choose your immigrants on the same lines.  You admit that the Canadian is too busy to kick at anything.  The Englishman is a born kicker. ("Yes, he is all that,” they said.) He kicks on principle, and that is what makes for civilisation.  So did your Englishman’s instinct about the glass.  Every new country needs—­vitally needs—­one-half of one per cent of its population trained to die of thirst rather than drink out of their hands.  You are always talking of the second generation of your Smyrniotes and Bessarabians.  Think what the second generation of the English are!’

They thought—­quite visibly—­but they did not much seem to relish it.  There was a queer stringhalt in their talk—­a conversational shy across the road—­when one touched on these subjects.  After a while I went to a Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where the trouble really lay, and who was behind it.

‘It is Labour,’ he said.  ‘You had better leave it alone.’

LABOUR

One cannot leave a thing alone if it is thrust under the nose at every turn.  I had not quitted the Quebec steamer three minutes when I was asked point-blank:  ’What do you think of the question of Asiatic Exclusion which is Agitating our Community?’

The Second Sign-Post on the Great Main Road says:  ’If a Community is agitated by a Question—­inquire politely after the health of the Agitator,’ This I did, without success; and had to temporise all across the Continent till I could find some one to help me to acceptable answers.  The Question appears to be confined to British Columbia.  There, after a while, the men who had their own reasons for not wishing to talk referred me to others who explained, and on the acutest understanding that no names were to be published (it is sweet to see engineers afraid of being hoist by their own petards) one got more or less at something like facts.