the prairie section, extending to Wolf Creek, Alberta, viâ Edmonton, takes 916 miles, and the mountain section from that point to Prince Rupert on the coast 840 miles. The prairie section region has been picturesquely described as "Canada's Bread Basket," comprising as it does some of the choicest wheat-growing areas. Into this region crowds of capable and experienced American farmers are pouring, having sold out their farms in the United States. Indeed, both here and on the line of the Canadian Pacific the country is being settled up by American farmers, who have brought both wealth and experience into the country, and who, in the majority of cases, are taking the oath of British citizenship. So marked has this immigration become from below the border that the name of the "American Invasion" (or even the "American Peril ") has been applied to it, and the views expressed that it is a menace to British nationality and sovereignty. Out of 147,000 immigrants admitted into Canada in the fiscal year closing in March 1909, 53,000 came from Great Britain, 60,000 from the United States, and the balance of 34,000 from continental Europe; and whilst the American element predominated it can scarcely be said that it would swamp the British element. In the current year 25,000 homesteads are being taken up by Americans from the United States; and indeed a good deal of the best land has been acquired also by American syndicates.

Now there are two points of view from which the British imperialist may regard this so-called American invasion, and the taking-up of colonial land by emigrants from continental Europe. The first is that Canada and the British oversea states generally require population, and that it does not matter where it comes from. The second is that in giving away this land the colonies are freely giving away what is imperial property. I have myself brought forward this view, and at a meeting at the Royal Colonial Institute in London in May 1909, during the discussion of a paper upon Imperial Emigration, which was read before a large audience, I brought this view forward prominently. In my speech I submitted that "every foreigner, however worthy, who takes up a homestead in Canada or Australia, before every

British citizen is provided for, is being permitted to rob some equivalent British citizen of his birthright." This might seem an extreme view, but it is to be recollected that these splendid lands and resources which are now being granted with such facility to all comers will not last for ever. In a short time this freehold British land will have been disposed of. In reply to this contention of mine the Canadian representative pointed out that it was quite true that Americans were being invited to take up land, but that “a large percentage of them were returned Canadians, people who had been in the United States from five to twenty years, but who had never given up allegiance to the old flag." There are, however, many immigrants purely Americans who are going in: "American farmers, anxious to secure land on the Canadian prairie, are now crowding into Saskatchewan and Alberta. So great is their number that the Dominion Government last month had to increase its staff of custom officials along the International Boundary."2 Now this contention of mine that British oversea land should first of all be allotted to people of British birth, before foreigners are allowed to acquire it, is one which has obsessed me greatly during some years' travel and study of imperial conditions, and I published, a short time ago, a pamphlet on the subject entitled, Your Share of Empire: A New Imperial Doctrine, which has had a considerable circulation. The "new doctrine" which I have brought forward is that the unoccupied lands of the Empire overseas should be considered to be the property of the people of the Empire, and that a tangible share of such land should be reserved for, or allotted to, every inhabitant of the British Isles before allotments are made to people of any other race. The modus operandi of securing this tangible share of empire, or one method at least, I have expressed as follows, and I think the importance of the subject may warrant its quoting: "Let every district, town, or parish in Great Britain begin now and mark off a slice of land in Oversea Britain and hold it in perpetuity for itself; let working capital be provided by loan whose interest might be met by voluntary taxation 1 Journal of the Royal Colonial Institute, June 1909. 2 The magazine Britannia, May 1909.

(or in any other way), and the areas of land be worked as industrial enterprises for their own benefit." Thus every town or district throughout Britain might create its counterpart, its own special property, in Canada or elsewhere, and profit by it; applying the profits of its working to the care of its people at home, reduction of taxes and abolition of unemployment. New centres of industry which should ensure work and a proper standard of life for all would be created. Would it be possible to stir Britannia from her apathy, from her indifferent regard of her "submerged tenth" and her "sweated" poor, and overcrowded dens, mean streets, and an appalling army of unemployed? On the one hand we have gangs of men marching about the streets proclaiming to civilization that they have nothing to do and nothing to eat. We have the figures of statisticians telling us that seven-tenths of our population of Britain come under the heading of "poor," and that one in fifty is a permanent pauper! Great Providence! are we a wretched tribe of savages, such as I have seen wresting a living from rocks and thorns in the desert? We are not; the Empire is capable of supporting all its people in plenty. We have great wheat plains untilled, great forests uncut, mountains of minerals unworked, thousands of miles of river unfished, and tenantless town-sites by the hundred; whilst a large proportion of our imperial race rots away from insufficiency under the very shadow of the British forum! Who are the custodians of empire ?-how can they account for their stewardship whilst these things be? It is nothing but a question of organization and the dictates of a common humanity, or common sense plus the imperial spirit, to apply this landless man to this manless land. Wake up Britannia!

Greatly obsessed as I have been, and shall ever be, by this grave imperial matter, I brought it forward again at a crowded meeting of the Royal Society of Arts in May 1909,1 during the discussion of a paper upon Canada and British Columbia as a field for British investment and settlement. In this paper the splendid resources of the great dominions were well brought forward; her minerals, forests, wheatplains everything that Providence could possibly bestow to 1 Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, June 1909: before quoted.