Yet for Canada
the outcome was by no means ill. If the Civil War did not bring
forth a new nation in the South, it helped to make one in the far
North. A common danger drew the scattered British Provinces
together and made ready the way for the coming Dominion of
Canada.
*See "The Day of the Confederacy", by Nathaniel W. Stephenson;
and "The Path of Empire" (in "The Chronicles of America").
It was not from the United States alone that an impetus came for
the closer union of the British Provinces. The same period and
the same events ripened opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of
some practical means of altering a colonial relationship which
bad ceased to bring profit but which had not ceased to be a
burden of responsibility and risk.
The British Empire had its beginning in the initiative of private
business men, not in any conscious policy of state. Yet as the
Empire grew the teaching of doctrinaires and the example of other
colonial powers had developed a definite policy whereby the
plantations overseas were to be made to serve the needs of the
nation at home. The end of empire was commercial profit; the
means, the political subordination of the colonies; the debit
entry, the cost of the military and naval and diplomatic services
borne by the mother country. But the course of events had now
broken down this theory.
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