hair and skins. Their beef is hard and stringy, and fetches the lowest price in the American market.

In the Territory of Wyoming there is still grazing land to be had free, and in Dakotah and Montana there are large tracts still open. The ranchman has many hardships to bear. In summer he has to follow his cattle under a burning sun. In winter he has often to camp out in the snow. He has to be absent for long periods of time from civilised society, he has to live on hard fare, and often to dispense with many comforts which we have come to look on as necessaries of life. He sometimes suffers heavy losses from dry summers and severe winters. Still, to many men, the free life in the open air has a quiet charm. I hardly think, however, that a settler, going out from this country, would act wisely in at once entering on the cattle business. It is a business which has to be learned like any other, and I think a young man going to the United States would do well to wait a year or two before he starts a herd of his own. This business is not like that of arable farming. Many men go out from this country to the United States who know very little of farming, and who after a time get on very well. They may make mistakes at first, but they come right at last. But then the land is always there to fall back on. But if a man invests his money in a herd of cattle, and mismanages them, he may lose not his income only, but his capital, or a great part of it. Sheep-breeding is practised on a large scale in Eastern Oregon and California, and in Montana, New Mexico, and Texas. The profits are large, but the risks are considered to be greater than in the case of cattle. Sheep require more attention than cattle. They are subject to scab and other infectious diseases to which cattle are not liable; and it is more difficult to bring them through a severe winter. In some of the ranges of Colorado there is a poisonous grass which kills sheep. Cattle either do not eat it or do not suffer from it. A considerable number of lambs are destroyed every year by the prairie wolves. As in this country, cattle and sheep do not thrive on the same pastures. The sheep eat out the best grasses, and leave nothing for the cattle but the coarser herbage. As a natural consequence, the men who turn out sheep on the free ranges are very unpopular with the breeders of cattle. It does not appear that much attention has as yet been paid in the United States. to the improvement of the breed of sheep. At the great cattle show held at Chicago in November last, the sheep from Canada, both Merinos and Cotswolds, were very superior to any that were exhibited by the flockmasters of the United States.

And now let me express a hope that none of those who may read this paper will be tempted to invest their means in this or that state, on the strength of what they may have read, without first making full enquiry for themselves. I should be very sorry to have such a responAnd let me put in a word by way of caution

sibility put upon me.

to those who may be tempted by the offers of land in America on the part of the various companies which sometimes appear in the newspapers here. We may depend upon it these offers are not made out of pure benevolence, and that the vendor does not fail to put a very handsome bonus in his pocket. I will give an instance of the large profits which these middlemen sometimes expect. Some time since a company, with which I am connected, was offered a tract of land in Texas for 60 cents, or about half-a-crown an acre, by an American. We had sent out to the United States a gentleman from this country in whom we had confidence, with instructions to examine the lands which were offered for sale and to report on them. He informed us that the parties who were in possession of the Texas land grant offered the land at 40 cents, so that if we had closed with the offer of the American land speculator, he would have pocketed a commission of 50 per cent. As it happened, we did not purchase the land, but if we had bought it direct from the owners, the difference between the price which we should have given them and that which would have been received by the land speculator would have more than covered the remuneration and expenses of the gentleman whom we sent out to report, though he was several months in America, and travelled many thousand miles. If any considerable number of persons should think of trying their fortunes in the United States, I think they could not do better than follow the example of the farmers in the south of Scotland. Some two years ago they clubbed together and sent out some of their number to examine the country and report upon it. Any one who may go out with the view of obtaining information either for himself or his friends will find many of his countrymen either settled in the state and in Canada, or residing there temporarily, who will be ready to give him all the assistance in their power. And in every part of North America I believe that English and Scotch settlers are very popular; there is no jealousy of them, but they are welcomed as men who are likely to make good citizens, and to develop the resources of the country.

POSTSCRIPT.

AIRLIE.

Since the above paper was written, the contract between the Canadian Government and the Syndicate which has been formed for constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway has been laid before the Dominion Parliament. If I am rightly informed as to the terms of that contract, no maximum rates for freight are to be imposed on the railway company, but they are to be allowed to charge as much as they can get; and, further, the construction of any line that might compete with the Canadian Pacific is to be prohibited for a period of twenty years.

It may be that the political necessity for constructing the Canadian Pacific railroad is so great that the Canadian Government has had no choice but to accept these onerous terms. But I am afraid that they will militate very much against the rapid settlement of the country. It is clear that settlers in North-Western Canada, who are dependent on a railroad which has such an unqualified monopoly conferred on it, will be placed at a great disadvantage as compared with their neighbours in the United States, where any one can obtain a charter for a railroad if he can find the capital required to build it.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIBERALISM.

Two of our most prominent Liberal statesmen have incidentally furnished the public with definitions of Liberalism, and, in doing so, have, for the moment, by a curiosity of fate, exchanged rôles in the matter of literary expression. In more than one speech, Mr. Gladstone, has, with a brevity and point that recall Lord Sherbrooke, said in substance that Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence, Conservatism distrust of the people tempered by fear.' At a Colston banquet, rather more than four years ago, Lord Sherbrooke, then Mr. Lowe, with a copiousness usually regarded as a characteristic of the Premier, gave four notes of a true Liberal. He was a man who, firstly, hoped more from the good that is in human nature than he feared from its evil; secondly, looked to the embodiment of great principles in legislation rather than to the manipulation of details by rule of thumb; thirdly, subordinated personal, sectional and local to national interests; and fourthly, respected institutions not because they were, but because they ought to be. Liberalism, in short, according to Lord Sherbrooke, works from faith in human nature, by means of general principles, in behalf of universal interests, and towards an ideal standard. Conservatism, he implies, may be conceived by reversing this picture.

The value of these definitions, struck out as they have been by the force of circumstances from minds at once enriched by the best culture of their time and continually in contact with public affairs, lies not merely in the abstract truth which they undoubtedly express, but in their adaptation to the practical realities of the case. The distinctive attitude of Liberalism has long been, still is, and to all appearance long will be, that of an attack upon the positions of Conservatism. In this attack, both the authorities quoted, and one of them in certain respects far more prominently and powerfully than the other, have been intimately engaged, and it is almost inevitable that a description by them of what they have been doing should furnish the directest attainable guide to Liberalism as a present and living fact. In this light, it is important to observe that the definitions given by the two statesmen are complementary and explanatory of each other. Whether or not Lord Sherbrooke's account of the notes

of Liberalism, if rigidly criticised, might be found to sin against the laws of logical division, it would not be difficult to show that his root-principle of faith in human nature gives origin to all the rest, while it is clearly the justification of Mr. Gladstone's assertion of trust of the people' as the substance of present political wisdom. This latter maxim again furnishes the practical method by which Lord Sherbrooke's generalisations are to be applied to the facts of life.

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Is this root-principle of Liberalism sound? Is faith in human nature a safe ground to go upon? Is it true that more is to be hoped from the good than to be feared from the evil that is in mankind in general? The question, it should be observed, has regard to a comparative, and not to an absolute state of things. If it had been put with reference to the perfection, or even, perhaps, the perfectibility, of human nature, there could have been no hesitation about the answer. There is too much to find fault with in all men, and in some men there are depths of evil which one feels are too gently described by such terms as insane, inhuman, infernal, diabolical, or the most. sinister epithets to be found in the vocabulary of condemnation. What is asked however is only whether for political issues, and in the construction of society, the nature of man may be assumed to be essentially a good or a bad, a trustworthy or an untrustworthy thing.

Here we are encountered by certain well-known and extensively accepted theological views, which represent human nature as entirely depraved. On this showing, there would, at first sight, appear to be no ground whatever for the faith on which Liberalism proposes to act. It is not necessary, however, to enter upon the formidable task of examining the theologian's proofs of his position, and that for three reasons. First, he does not affirm that the human nature at any given time existing on the face of the earth is entirely depraved, but only that it would be so, were it not for a special divine interposition of a corrective character, which, he assures us, is, and always has been, at work. Next, as he does not know on what scale this alleged interposition may be going on, and can only form. a conjecture from what he sees, like other people, he is not in a position to say that it may not embrace all the faculties of all men. Lastly, he admits that his views are, in no case, inconsistent with the existence of any amount of what to all appearance are personal and social virtues, against which he has nothing to say except that in some instances, though in none for certain, they may be destitute of a peculiar religious character and value, required on what he claims as the authority of revelation, but which in no way unfits them for the purposes of ordinary life.

Feeling ourselves therefore at absolute liberty to put the ques-tion, Is human nature, as we find it, essentially good or evil? we open our eyes, and what do we see? Perfection? By no means. A vast amount of wickedness, folly, and weakness, but a vast amount of

virtue, wisdom, and strength as well, in perpetual conflict with the other; and what we have to consider is whether the better do not preponderate over the worse elements in the struggle. That is a consideration which every one must deal with for himself on such evidence as lies within his reach. There is the net result of all human effort and struggle in the past, in the condition of the organised societies of the world as we see them. Some of them, it is true, are not much to boast of, but is not the worst of them a proof that the influences that go to put things right are stronger than those that go to put them wrong? There are the people one comes across or hears authentically of in life. They are not all saints and sages certainly, but does not experience convey the impression that the number of individuals who are applying a fair amount of good sense and right motive to the business of the world, far outweighs those whose activity is of an opposite character? Then there is one's own nature and career, of which, in the deeper springs of them, each man is generally a juster judge than those who can only bestow a glance on them from the outside. Is it conceivable that from any given number of men who have been induced to perform an efficient process of introspective criticism, a majority of reports, or even a single report, would be returned of an absolutely condemnatory character ?

What now is the joint effect of these different testimonies, all of them universally accessible? Does it differ from the conclusion drawn by Evolutionary Science, working in a more recondite sphere, that the good elements in human nature have the power of a present, and the promise of a growing, victory over the evil? The answer of Liberalism is distinctly, No. It affirms as a fact of Nature, that humanity as a whole merits respect and confidence, and that politicians and all who in any way occupy themselves with the protection and improvement of human society are engaged, not only in a generous, but in a hopeful, undertaking.

Can it be said that Conservatism founds upon this creed? It would be invidious, and in many cases unjust, to say of individual Conservatives that they either despise the rest of society or are indifferent to its well-being. As private persons, dealing with humanity in concrete cases, they may be all that not only justice, but courtesy and kindness require. But that is not the point that is in question, and it merely furnishes an additional illustration of the commonplace that men are often better than their creed. We have to do with them as members of a public organisation that seeks to deal with society in the mass, and their estimate of mankind must be measured by the spirit which really gives life and shape to the body which they help to form. The two great political tendencies, the one to change and the other to resist change, have inevitably worked up the individual constituents of society into two colossal organisms