They have been invited for the first time to participate in a national
celebration. They will share in the rejoicings of the occasion of the
sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty's reign. Their military and police
forces will be represented in the royal procession, and their Prime
Ministers will be the guests of the Imperial Government. Let us
hope that their great gathering may lead to a closer union among the
family nations, all under one flag and owning allegiance to one
Sovereign, which make up the British Empire.

In ten years the British Empire had, indeed, moved
notably, and the most marked progress had been made by
Canada. Canada was the acknowledged leader amongst the
Dominions overseas. We have noted several causes contri-
buting to enhance her prestige. We have seen, after a
period of stagnation, an enfeebled government overthrown
and a new administration, at the head of which was a
French-Canadian of great personal distinction and elo-
quence, of whom as yet little was known and everything
was hoped, upon the scene.

It was in the spring of this year that the question of
the fiscal relations between Canada and the United King-
dom came almost dramatically to the forefront in Imperial
politics. In April there came the Fielding Tariff Law, by
which preferential treatment was accorded to Great Britain
unconditionally. Thus a great and momentous step was
taken towards Imperial union. It lent the British advocates
of Tariff Reform a practical basis from which to launch their
policy; although in Canada it was a step rather towards the
Free Trade long promised by the Liberal Party.

But before the preference could go into effect the treaties
with Germany and Belgium had to be denounced by Great
Britain, and this was later agreed to. The announcement
of the Fielding Tariff, according preference to British goods
and denouncing the existing treaty with Germany, thrilled
the whole Empire, evoking from Mr. Kipling the lines:

Daughter am I in my mother's house,
But mistress in mine own,

in which Canada proclaimed her commercial independence.

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