This necessarily brief review of the work of the Royal Society could not well be left out of an address like this; and I can now pass on to some reflections that occur to me on the general subject. In the literature of biography, so susceptible of a treatment full of human interests and sympathies—as chatty Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and Lockhart's "Life of Scott," notably illustrate—we have little to show, except it be the enterprise of publishers and the zeal of too enthusiastic friends. Nor is it necessary to dwell on the literature of the law, which is becoming in a measure43 more of a technical and less of a learned profession in the larger sense, unless, indeed, our university schools of political science eventually elevate it to a wider range of thought. Several excellent books of a purely technical character have been compiled from year to year, but no Kent, or Story, or Cooley has yet appeared to instruct us by a luminous exposition of principle, or breadth of knowledge. Those who know anything of Dr. Edward Blake's great intellectual power, of his wealth of legal learning, of his insight into the operations of political constitutions, cannot deny that he at least could produce a work which might equal in many respects those of the great Americans here named; but it looks very much at present as if he, and others I could mention, will give up their best years to the absorbing and uncertain struggles of politics, rather than to the literature of that profession to which they might, under different conditions, raise imperishable memorials. From the pulpit many of us hear from time to time eloquent and well reasoned efforts which tell us how much even the class, necessarily most conservative in its traditions, and confined in its teachings, has been forced by modern tendencies to enlarge its human sympathies and widen its intellectual horizon; but the published sermons are relatively few in number; and while, now and then, at intervals, after a public celebration, an important anniversary or ceremonial, or as a sequence of a controversy on the merits or demerits of creed or dogma, we see a pile of pamphlets on the counter of a bookstore, we do not hear of any printed book of sermons that appears to have entered of recent years into the domain of human thought and discussion in the great world beyond our territorial limits.
I shall not attempt to dwell at any length on the intellectual standard of our legislative bodies, but shall confine myself to a few general observations that naturally suggest themselves to an observer of our political conditions. Now, as in all times of our history, political life claims many strong, keen and cultured intellects, although it is doubtful whether the tendency of our democratic institutions is to encourage the most highly educated organizations to venture, or remain, should once they venture, in the agitated and unsafe sea of political passion and controversy.44 The first parliament of the Dominion, and the first legislatures of the provinces, which met after the federal union of 1867, when the system of dual representation was permissible—a system whose advantages are more obvious now—brought into public life the most brilliant and astute intellects of Canada, and it will probably be a long time before we shall again see assemblages so distinguished for oratory, humour and intellectual power. A federal system was, doubtless, the only one feasible under the racial and natural conditions that met the Quebec Conference of 1864; but, while admitting its political necessity, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that the great drain its numerous legislative bodies and governments make upon the mental resources of a limited population—a drain increased by the abolition of dual representation—is calculated to weaken our intellectual strength in our legislative halls, when a legislative union would in the nature of things concentrate that strength in one powerful current of activity and thought. A population of five millions of people has to provide not only between six and seven hundred representatives, who must devote a large amount of time to the public service for inadequate compensation, but also lieutenant-governors, judges and high officials, holding positions requiring intellectual qualifications as well as business capacity if they are properly filled. Apart from these considerations, it must be remembered that the opportunities of acquiring wealth and success in business or professional vocations have naturally increased with the material development of the Dominion, and that men of brains have consequently even less inducement than formerly to enter on the uncertain and too often ungrateful pursuit of politics. We have also the danger before us that it will be with us, as it is in the United States and even in England under the new conditions that are rapidly developing there; the professional politician, who is too often the creation of factions and cliques, and the lower influences of political intrigue and party management, will be found, as time passes, more common in our legislative halls, to the detriment of those higher ideals that should be the animating principles of public life in this young country, whose future happiness and45 greatness depend so much on the present methods of party government. Be all this as it may be, one may still fairly claim for our legislative bodies that their intellectual standard can compare favourably with that of the Congress at Washington or the state legislatures of Massachusetts and New England generally. After all, it is not for brilliant intellectual pyrotechnics we should now so much look to the legislative bodies of Canada, but rather for honesty of purpose, keen comprehension of the public interests, and a business capacity which can grasp the actual material wants and necessities of a country which has to face the competition, and even opposition, of a great people full of industrial as well as intellectual energy.
Nowhere in this review have I claimed for this country any very striking results in the course of the half century since which we have shown so much political and material activity. I cannot boast that we have produced a great poem or a great history which has attracted the attention of the world beyond us, and assuredly we find no noteworthy attempt in the direction of a novel of our modern life; but what I do claim is, looking at the results generally, the work we have done has been sometimes above the average in those fields of literature—and here I include, necessarily, science—in which Canadians have worked. They have shown in many productions a conscientious spirit of research, patient industry, and not a little literary skill in the management of their material. I think, on the whole, there have been enough good poems, histories and essays written and published in Canada for the last four or five decades to prove that there has been a steady intellectual growth on the part of our people, and that it has kept pace at all events with the mental growth in the pulpit, or in the legislative halls, where, of late years, a keen practical debating style has taken the place of the more rheto............