The Dominion in 1983, Ralph Centennius [short books to read TXT] 📗

not that the feeling in British Columbia was not loyal to the Dominion, but that some 30,000 rowdies who had assembled and organized in San Francisco were preparing for a descent upon her poorly fortified ports. Now was the turning point in the destinies of the country. If the ministers at Ottawa had not stood firmly to their guns, all our subsequent career, instead of being the golden century of magnificent progress and peace that it has been, would have been linked with all the turbulence and the alternate advance and retrogression of the States.

A general election for the Dominion had been timed to take place in the beginning of June, and the day was looked forward to by all the noisy demagogues of Ontario as the day when the blood-thirsty Tories were to be hurled from power by the people in righteous wrath, and the country saved from the horrors of war. According to these garrulous parties, Ontario, the wealthiest and most populous Province of the seven, was to welcome the invaders, bidding them enter Canadian territory in the name of the people, and plant the Stars and Stripes wherever they halted. Bloodshed would thus be avoided, and everyone would soon come round to the new order of things and take to it naturally. Quebec might perhaps object, "but what did a few handfuls of Frenchmen matter anyway."

On the day before the election, one party was full of boisterous, bragging insolence; the other, still steadfast, firmly clinging to what seemed a forlorn hope. Before the ending of another day all was changed—a complete transformation scene had taken place.

When the morning journals on the election day appeared, their news from the United States was such a terrible chapter of accidents as has rarely fallen to the lot of journals to publish in one day. The President had been shot at in New York by an unemployed foreign artisan, the night before, while leaving a mansion on Fifth Avenue. Troubles between labor and capital, which had been brewing for some time, had broken out in several manufacturing centres, and were threatening to spread to all large cities. The money market was showing signs of considerable derangement. Fearful storms and floods were chronicled from all parts; while last, but not least, three transports which had embarked the greater part of the "army," at San Francisco, that was to have "delivered" British Columbia, had foundered in a hurricane only two miles out, dragging all the poor deluded fellows to a watery grave. The same day brought good news from the old world. Ireland's great statesman had won for Britain a wonderful diplomatic triumph in the East, which added to the Empire, without a drop of blood being shed, territories extending from the confines of British India to the Mediterranean. All the leading men in Europe (so the despatch read) were astonished at the exhibition of so much moral force in the Old Country after they had been imagining the Empire as about to go to pieces under the recent terrible strain. Other good news which had its effect here was that for Ireland there had at last been found men who understood her wants, and what was better, whom she herself understood, so that she considered herself as having just embarked upon a new career of glory as an integral and indispensable part of the Empire.

The effect of all this information on the electors of Canada was very marked. The demagogues who elevated themselves upon barrels or waggons and buggies to spout their frothy nonsense to the public, could get but few listeners, though only twenty-four hours ago applauding crowds would have assembled. Their hold on the people was gone; every one was reading the papers or discussing the startling news. Many men who the day before were noisily advocating everything disloyal and rebellious, were silent and thoughtful. Men who had remained loyal to Canada all through quickly seized the occasion and appealed to the people to stand firm to the Dominion, pointing out the uncertainty of affairs in the States and contrasting them with the vitality and power of the Old Country, doubly powerful now that Ireland had obtained perfect satisfaction and was contented. The election resulted in a complete triumph for the government, and was a most satisfactory vindication of their policy. The ranks of the Opposition were broken up and their forces demoralized. Not a word was heard about annexation that night unless in scorn.

The heart of the young nation was stirred to its very depths during the next two months, while a most sublime period in our history was being passed through. The would-be invaders of Canada were determined not to be baulked in their enterprise, the movement having gone too far to collapse suddenly, and perhaps the leaders had not sufficient foresight to see that the troubles rising in the States must necessarily get worse before they were better, and take several years to subside; perhaps they did not realize fully the new unanimity of public feeling in Canada. Anyhow the activity of their preparations did not lessen, but rather increased, and the commencement of offensive operations was postponed so that they might be more complete. Disloyalty was no longer popular in Ontario or in any other province, in fact among all who had been disaffected a reaction and revulsion of feeling set in, in favor of intense loyalty to the Dominion, and a most felicitous union was effected between the Conservatives and Reformers. The common danger brought all parties together, forgetful of old prejudices, and the old bitter hatred grew less and less until its final extinction. Henceforth there was but one party with but one object in view—the welfare of the Dominion.

Every able-bodied man in Canada between the ages of 20 and 45 was under drill, and the country was fully prepared and fully expecting to undertake the invaders without outside assistance, but Great Britain being in no danger now in Europe, despatched 12,000 men to Canada, and with her recovered prestige was enabled to remonstrate forcibly with the Washington Government concerning American connivance. The British remonstrances had the desired effect, for the American authorities promptly arrested the leaders of the "army of deliverance," though by so doing they aroused the animosity of many of their own supporters. The "army" then speedily fell away and all danger was over. Of course the benefit to Canada of having had the national feeling so deeply stirred was incalculable, for all classes of men in all the provinces had been animated by the profoundest sentiments and the strongest determination possible, and it was the opinion of leading military men of the time that the Canadians under arms, though outnumbered trebly by the intending invaders, would have held their own gallantly and have come off victorious.

The excitement aroused by these stirring occurrences began to quiet down towards the approaching Fall, when the Canadian ship of state was again under full sail, heading for the waters of prosperity. Since then our political history has been so intimately connected with great inventions and discoveries, that a narration of one without a description of the other is scarcely possible.

II.

  "For miracles are ceased;
  "And therefore we must needs admit the means
  "How things are perfected."
                      —Henry V, Act I.

It was well understood by the Romans in their palmy days that a great empire could not be held together without means of easy communication between distant provinces, and their fine hard roads ramifying from Rome to the remote corners of Gaul or Dacia, testify to their wisdom and enterprise in this respect. When Great Britain in the eighteenth century, full of inventive skill, reared men who by means of improved roads, well-bred horses and fine vehicles raised the rate of travel to ten miles an hour from end to end of the kingdom, a great deal of complacent satisfaction was indulged in over the advantages likely to result from such rapid travelling. This great speed, however, was made to appear quite slow in the first half of the nineteenth century when locomotives were invented capable of covering sixty miles an hour. Nowadays the old cumbrous locomotive, rumbling and puffing along and making only sixty miles in sixty minutes, is a very dilatory machine in comparison with our light and beautiful rocket cars, which frequently dart through the air at the rate of sixty miles in one minute. The advantages to a country like ours, over 3,000 miles wide, of swift transit are obvious. The differences in sentiment, politically, nationally, and morally, which arose aforetime when people under the same government lived 3,000 miles apart have disappeared to be replaced by a powerful unanimity that renders possible great social movements, utterly impossible in the railway age, when seven days were consumed in journeying from east to west. The old idea that balloons would be used in this century for travelling has proved a delusion, almost their only use now being a meteorological one.

Our rocket cars were only perfected in the usual slow course of invention, and could neither have been constructed nor propelled a hundred years ago, for neither was the metal of which they are constructed produced, nor had the method of propulsion or even the propulsive power been developed. Inventors had to wait till science had given us in abundance a metal less than a quarter the weight of iron, but as strong and durable, and this was not until some fifty years ago when a process was discovered for producing cheaply the beautiful metal calcium. But calcium would have been little use alone. Aluminium, which is now so plentiful, had to be alloyed with it, and aluminium was not used to any great extent till the beginning of this century, when an electric process of reducing it quickly from its ore—common clay—was discovered. The metal known as calcium bronze, which is now so common, is an alloy of calcium, 0.75; aluminium, 0.20; and 0.05 of other metals and metalloids in varying proportions according to different patents. This alloy has all the useful properties of the finest steel with about one-fourth its weight, and is besides perfectly non-oxydisable and never tarnishes. Without the production of a metal with all these combined qualities, we might still in our journeys, be dawdling along at sixty miles an hour in a cumbrous railroad car behind a snorting, screaming locomotive.

Our swiftly darting cars were not at first constructed on such perfect principles as now. Invention seems to follow certain laws, and has to take its time. A new discovery in physics has to be supplemented by one in chemistry, and one in chemistry by another in physics, and so on through a whole century, perhaps, before any great invention is perfected. Thus it happens that, though the principle of the rocket has been known for an age, it is only comparatively recently that it has been applied to the propulsion of cars. An invention, too, always presents itself to an inventor at first in the most complicated form, and frequently many years are passed in attempts at simplification. What a wide interval is there between the steam locomotive with all its complex mechanism, and the magnificently simple rocket car! A century of ceaseless invention is comprehended between the two! Before the simplicity of our cars was arrived at, inventors had to give up boilers, fire-boxes, valves, steam-pipes, cylinders, pistons, wheels, cranks, levers, and a host of minor parts. Wheels died hard. Electric locomotives using them were brought out and were considered to do the very fastest thing possible in locomotion, and such was in fact the case while wheels were used, for wheels could not have borne a faster pace without flying to pieces from centrifugal force. But when an inventor devised a machine on runners to move on lubricated rails, a great step was gained, though the invention was not a success, and when, after this, liquid carbonic acid, or carbonic acid ice expanding again to a gas was employed as a motive power, another advance was made. Then the greatest lift of all was given. The solidification of oxygen and hydrogen by an easy process was discovered and mankind presented with a new motive power. In due time a way was found to make the solid substance re-assume the gaseous form either suddenly or by degrees, and thenceforth thousands of potential horse-power could be obtained in a form convenient for storing or carrying about. It is now as simple a matter to buy a hundred horse-power over the counter as a pound of sugar.

From Toronto to Winnipeg in thirty minutes! From Winnipeg to the Pacific in forty minutes! Such is our usual pace in 1983. By hiring a special car the whole distance from Toronto to Victoria can be accomplished in fifty minutes. A higher speed still is quite possible, but is not permitted because of the risk of collision with other cars. Collisions have never yet occurred on account of the rigid adherence to very strict regulations. Cars that take short