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Selkirk settlement, have agreed to the formation of a confederacy, and are anxious for its immediate establishment; but those of New Brunswick, from motives which appear to be of the narrowest and most selfish character, refuse to join in the scheme, which cannot, therefore, be carried out for the present. Their only possible reason for thus acting is, that they will cease to possess the advantages they derive from having a governor and government officials residing among them, and lose their individuality as a distinct province, if they are absorbed in the proposed empire. Some allege, also, that in the event of a war between the other provinces and the States, they might, by being separate, avoid being drawn into it; whereas, if they were united in a confederation, they must take their part in fighting, and would, from their exposed position, become the greatest sufferers. If independent, also, they fancy that they could make their own terms with an enemy, forgetting that the very proposal is an act of disloyalty to the mother country. As, however, a large number of the voters are in favour of the scheme, there can be little doubt that before long a majority will be obtained, and that the province will send in its adhesion.

As the principles on which the confederation is to be formed have been agreed on by the representatives of those provinces willing to form it, and the plan has received the cordial approval of the imperial government, there can be no doubt that its final establishment is only a matter of time. Probably only a short time will elapse before the opponents to the plan in New Brunswick will be won over, and the whole of British North America will be formed into one powerful state.

The opening of the Intercolonial Railway will assist greatly in amalgamating the people of the different provinces, as it has already, if we mistake not, assisted in conjunction with wise legislation in uniting the races who inhabit the two Canadas, and the people of the different provinces will learn to feel that they are the inhabitants of a large and powerful state, with a magnificent destiny in store for their children, instead of belonging to a small, little thought of, and often somewhat snubbed colony.

The question as to whether or not New Brunswick is or is not acting wisely, lies in the smallest compass. She and Nova Scotia must form a very important part of the new state, as affording its chief harbours for the greater part of the year on the Atlantic board, while as small colonies of England they must remain insignificant, or should they fall into the hands of the United States, their importance as maritime states would be almost entirely lost, in consequence of the ports and harbours which those States already possess, and through which Canada and the Far West can be far more readily supplied than through theirs. Let the new state establish a light commercial tariff, and the whole trade of Canada, of the Red River settlements, and those on the shores of the Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg, must pass along the Intercolonial Railway through its ports.

The chief topics connected with Canada are intimately blended. As the intercolonial railway will assist to unite the people of the different provinces and promote their interests, so by the establishment of the confederation alone can the railway itself be profitably supported. Separated,

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with Canada as part of the states or the country beyond it, commerce would take a more southerly course, and the northern railway will be neglected, or used only by those inhabiting the shores of the lower part of the St. Lawrence. In the same way, the successful defence of Canada will be greatly facilitated by the union of the provinces from east to west, and by an easy means of communication along their whole course. effect this latter object, it follows that the north-west territory should be formed without delay into a crown colony and opened up to colonisation; indeed, that every possible encouragement should be afforded towards its settlement from the shores of Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains. Without the slightest apprehension of any outbreak between the governments of England and the United States, it is very possible that, should the frontiers of the British possessions in North America be left not only unguarded, but unoccupied, as they are, with one small exception, the lawless inhabitants of the less settled parts of the Western States may indulge themselves, for want of better employment, in making an occasional raid over the British frontier, or may perhaps establish themselves on territory to which they have no claim, and from which, in time, it may become no easy matter to dislodge them. From these positions they would greatly harass the eastern frontiers of British Columbia, and the western confines of Canada, while the Selkirk settlement, the only occupied spot, would fall into their hands an easy prey. Besides this, the communication between the east and west would be completely cut off. The establishment of this communication is of importance not only to colonial, but to imperial interests, as by it our intercourse with the islands of the Pacific, with Japan and China, with Australia and New Zealand, and even with our possessions in India, may be maintained, should we be at war with nations able to impede it in other directions. It therefore becomes the duty of the English government to press forward the arrangements with the Hudson's Bay Company for the abandonment of their claims over the territory which interferes with its colonisation, either to compensate them if those claims are found to be just, or to compel them to yield them up if proved illegal.

Various schemes have been proposed for the defence of Canada. With such a frontier as we have described, and so many vulnerable parts, or rather vulnerable all over, it is a matter of impossibility to prevent invasion, but it would be far from impossible to make that invasion utterly profitless and most disastrous to the invading forces.

The only part of the scheme at present generally known is that strong fortifications are to be formed at Montreal and on the north side of the St. Lawrence, in front of Quebec. We know how the Canadians in former years fought in defence of their hearths and homes, and, in spite of what has been asserted to the contrary in England, they have shown every disposition to prepare themselves for the protection of their country, should their boastful neighbours again assail them. Their volunteer corps were formed with as much ease as were those in England, while the numbers who sacrifice their time as readily in the acquirement of the knowledge necessary to render them efficient, show that there is no lack of military zeal and patriotism in the country. The militia regiments are also raised without difficulty, and the men show no want of martial ardour,

or of a patriotic spirit. The objections which some time back were made by the then government of Canada to the establishment of an adequate force of militia arose from financial causes, and from their ignorance of the necessities of the case, but their opinion was in no way participated in by the people at large.

We may rely, therefore, on the loyalty and bravery of the people of Canada to come forward to a man to repel invasion, and to their efficient support of the regular troops stationed in the country.

The Americans would have a great advantage in the facility with which they could place gun-boats on the lakes, and could run up craft for the transport of troops. By the existing treaty, no armed vessels can be kept by either party on the lake. The English, therefore, can only have a fleet of gun-boats ready, constructed in pieces, to be transported overland, and put together on Lake Ontario or Lake Huron, and stored in the mean time either at Halifax or at Ottawa. It may be argued that in the latter place they would appear too much like a menace to allow of the adoption of that plan. At the same time we cannot conceive why a fleet of gun-boats at Ottawa should give more offence than the construction of strong fortifications at Montreal and Quebec, the calling out of the militia, or the maintenance of British troops in the province. On the contrary, we should say that by putting the province in a thorough state of defence, and by showing the Americans that we were determined to maintain it against all aggression, we should be more likely to preserve peace, and that by giving this security to the inhabitants, we should encourage their industry, and be greatly advancing their material prosperity.

With the free government which Canada and her sister provinces enjoy, with their immunity from debt and taxation, their wonderful means of intercommunication, their vast internal resources only as yet partly known or developed, their wide-extending territory, including British Central America, capable of supporting millions of inhabitants, if peace is preserved and their integrity maintained, a great and glorious future must be in store for the new State. The very requirements which can alone produce this condition should be a sufficient guarantee to the Americans that England's policy towards the States will always be of a pacific character, though they should be convinced from her past history that she is not likely to allow herself to be insulted with impunity, nor to allow her offspring to be taken by force while she has the power to support them.

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DON SEBASTIAN OF PORTUGAL.

BY MRS. ALFRED M. MÜNSTER.

HISTORY shows a long list of royal impostors, and of them all there is none more remarkable than he who, twenty-three years after the supposed death of Don Sebastian of Portugal, laid claim to the crown of that country. In truth, while reading the meagre and imperfect records of the investigations to which the claim gave rise, one is strongly inclined to believe in his pretensions, which raised uneasy doubt even in those whose interest it was to repudiate the truth and justice of his story. All evidence tending to establish the facts he proclaimed were as much as possible suppressed at the time, and afterwards garbled and misrepresented in the relation, so that a very one-sided statement of the case is all that has descended to us.

Don Juan, Prince of Portugal, whose short life had been a lingering torture, died eighteen days before his son, Don Sebastian, was born. The young widow, Doña Juana of Spain, religious almost to monomania, saw in her husband's death a manifestation of Heaven's will that she should be disencumbered of earthly ties, the better to devote herself to the austere devotional life which had always been her ideal. It was, therefore, with something akin to pleasure that, in compliance with the laws of Portugal, she resigned her fatherless boy to the guardianship of his paternal grandparents, King John and Queen Catharina; and from the time the infant heir to the throne was four months old his mother never again beheld him, for at that period the Emperor Charles V. summoned his widowed daughter to Spain, there to assume the regency on the occasion of the marriage of her brother Philip with Mary Tudor of England. The young widow seems to have loved her country and her family next to her religion, and, almost wholly forgetful of her son, became alternately absorbed by ambitious projects and the most rigorous devotional exercises.

Queen Catharina, meanwhile, being a woman of strong sense and sound judgment, devoted all her energies to the well-being of her grandson. The frequent intermarriages between the houses of Avis and Hapsburg had produced their natural effects in revoltingly-near relationships between the royal spouses of the two races, and the transmission of diseases, both bodily and mental. Queen Catharina determined to counteract Don Sebastian's hereditary delicacy of constitution by all the means at her command, and so judiciously did she regulate the training of the royal child, that his fretful, fragile infancy was succeeded by a robust, hardy boyhood. Strong as a peasant, and delighting in the roughest sports and most violent exercises, the prince yet inherited from his parents a wild religious enthusiasm, which was still further fostered by the Jesuit Mentors with whom Catharina surrounded him. King John having died when Sebastian was but three years old, Catharina was nominated Regent of Portugal and guardian of her grandson during his minority, and it was at that period that Doña Juana made her only attempt to reassume her maternal rights. Her claim, however, to be entrusted with her son's education fell through from two causes, the one being the Portuguese jealousy of the Hapsburg influence, and the other the lukewarm support afforded her by her father, who was anxious, by propitiating Catharina, to obtain from her a recognition of the rights of King Philip and his son, Don Carlos, to the throne of Portugal, in the event of Don Sebastian's death.

As the young king grew in years and intelligence, his hereditary bias became more strongly marked, the favourite themes of his studies were the records of the magnificent exploits of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the no less remarkable achievements of his maternal grandfather, the Emperor Charles V., in the wars against the Moors. These, with books of wild adventure and foreign travel, were Sebastian's delight, to the exclusion of the subtle mysteries of statecraft, to which his grandmother wished to turn his attention. Daring even to temerity, the youth had no sympathy with diplomatists and their cobweb scheming; he burned with martial ardour, and the devout longing to secure the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent, and even in early childhood was wont to be visited by seasons of ecstatic reverie, in which the favourite saints of Portugal vouchsafed to appear to and encourage him in what soon became manifested as the settled purpose of his life. Constantly courting danger in his desire to inure his body to fatigue, he so often hazarded his life, that his grandmother (who must have regarded him much as a hen might do an eaglet which she had hatched) found his guardianship more than sufficient to engross all her attention, and therefore resigned the regency to the Cardinal-Infant Don Henrique, who, in his turn, formally relinquished it when, at the age of fourteen, Sebastian, by the law of Portugal, attained his majority.

The young king astonished all parties by the ease and power with which he assumed his new duties. Declining his uncle's offered assistance, he firmly grasped the reins of government, read all despatches, summoned cortes, exhibited the keenest interest in the military details submitted to him, but above all, true to his leading idea, manifested supreme solicitude in the affairs of the Portuguese colony of Goa and the settlements on the coasts of Barbary. The populace and the army adored him, the Jesuits hailed him as the champion of their order, the bolder and more chivalrous portion of the young nobility also looked fondly towards him as their future leader in well-fought fields; but with the luxurious court and those whose well-being depended on its magnificence, Sebastian was in sad disfavour, the gorgeous pageants and gay revels of King John's time were evidently things to be reproduced no more; severe almost to asceticism in his personal habits, the young king discouraged everything which bordered on effeminacy or luxury, and the lovely young doñas of Lisbon saw with mortification that their sweetest smiles and most bewitching glances were wasted on one who preferred a boar-hunt in the forests of Cintra, or the braving of wind and wave in a small vessel (which he put forth in the wildest weather,) to all the charms of youth and beauty. Another great enjoyment of Sebastian's was the drilling and reviewing of a corps of volunteers, composed of the most abandoned ruffians and rogues in Portugal, who flocked eagerly to his standard. Still keeping in view the conversion and subjugation of the Moors, and with reason believing that the wild and scorching regions so dear to his heart might be less efficacious

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