of almost any substance.  Its College of Inventors and Physical Institute are the most perfect establishments.  From its extensive Botanical Gardens, where the Dominion Botanical Society make their experiments with plants and trees from all countries, great national benefits have been derived.  Here are grown specimens of herbs and shrubs which prevent or cure every human disease.  On one side is seen the plant, before the smoke of whose leaves when inhaled, consumption succumbs; on another, the shrub whose berries eradicate scrofula from the system, and thus through all the catalogue of ills.  New Westminster also boasts a fine University, a College of Physicians and a Sanitarium; the two latter cause the city to be the resort of invalids from far and near.  No diseases are here called incurable.  At Mingan harbour, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are situated the great works where all the rocket-cars for the Dominion are built.  The site was chosen on account of the large tract of desolate country to the north of it.  The cars as soon as built are tested, first at short flights, then at longer ones, and conductors are trained to manage them.  There are no regular lines of cars through or over Labrador, and so there is no risk of collision in the trial trips.  Considerable difficulty is experienced at first in taking a car a flight of 100 miles, but by practice flights of over 1,000 miles are managed with perfect safety.

The contrast between the present and past might be drawn out to any extent, but enough has been said to enable the dullest mind to realize the truly marvellous development of our great Dominion.  And if the development and advance have been great industrially and commercially, so have they been great, almost greater, socially; for socially we have set examples which the whole world has not been slow to follow.

III.

“But Heaven hath a hand in these events.” 
—­Richard II, Act V.

The state of society in the nineteenth century would have but few attractions for us of the twentieth, were we able to return along the vista of a hundred years.  Our manners and customs are so vastly different from those of our great-grandfathers that we should feel out of place indeed had we to go back, even for a short time, to their uncouth and imperfect ways.  Their extraordinarily complex method of governing themselves, and their intricate political machinery would be very distressing to us, and are calculated to make one think that a keen pleasure in governing or in being overgoverned—­not a special aptitude or genius for governing—­must have been very common among them.  From the alarming blunders made in directing public affairs, and from the manner in which beneficial measures were opposed by the party out of office, it appears quite certain that the instincts of true statesmanship did not animate all classes then as now.  Nevertheless our forefathers went into the work of governing themselves and each