The feeling in favour of Free Trade is growing fast in Western
     Canada, and I believe I am right in adding the United States.

We have our strong and rapidly growing farmers’ organisations, such as the United Farmers of Alberta, and of each Western province, so that farmers are now making themselves heard and felt in politics, and farmers realise that they are being exploited for the benefit of the manufacturer.  Excellent articles appear almost weekly in the Grain Growers’ Guide, published in Winnipeg, showing the curse of Protection.

     A Canadian Free Trade Union, affiliated with the International Free
     Trade League, has just been formed in Winnipeg, and many prominent
     business and professional men are connected with it.

It ought to be better known among the electors of Great Britain how Free Trade is growing in Canada, that they may be less inclined to commit the fatal mistake of changing England’s policy.  Canada is often quoted in English politics now, and the real facts should be known.

No experience has, therefore, as yet been acquired which would enable a matured judgment to be formed as to the extent to which Free Trade may be regarded as a preventive to war.  The question remains substantially much in the same condition as it was seventy years ago.  In forming an opinion upon it, we have still to rely largely on conjecture and on academic considerations.  All that has been proved is that numerous wars have taken place during a period of history when Protection was the rule, and Free Trade the exception; though the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy would, of course, be involved, if on that account it were inferred that the protection of national industries has necessarily been the chief cause of war.

Without indulging in any utopian dreams as to the possibility of inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that, in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century, not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike—­I may almost say a genuine horror—­of war has grown apace amongst the civilised nations of the world.  The destructiveness of modern weapons of offence, the fearful personal responsibility devolving on the individuals who order the first shot to be fired, the complete uncertainty which prevails as to the naval, military, and political results which will ensue if the huge armaments of modern States are brought into collision, the growth of a benevolent, if at times somewhat eccentric humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy—­though it is at times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be peaceful—­have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes.  This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as compared to former