the steady invasion of American farmers, reach their highest percentage in Alberta where they are 30 per cent. of the total. In Ontario the immigration of factory workers and artisans has brought the British-born element up to almost 20 per cent. Two of the largest hives of British-born people in Canada are Centre Winnipeg and East Calgary, and these areas have the distinction of returning the only two Labour members in the Federal House.

For the first time in its history Canada possesses cities of more than half-a-million population. These are Montreal and Toronto, with 618,000 and 521,893 inhabitants respectively. The former has in its environment half-a-dozen satellite towns of considerable size which bring the population of Greater 'Montreal' to the 700,000 mark. No other city has attained the 200,000 mark, but during the past decade Ottawa and Hamilton have joined Winnipeg and Vancouver in the 100,000 category. The aggrandisement of the large city has not proceeded at the same pace in Canada as in the United States. In 1920 the United States had 25.9 of its population resident in cities of 100,000 and over, but Canada in 1921 had only 18.87 per cent. of its population in cities of this size.

Not the least important feature of the census returns is their political repercussions, for automatically under the terms of the British North America Act a redistribution of the Federal seats must follow each census. A Bill for this purpose is before the House of Commons and it will register another stage in the westward shift of political power which has been in process for the last two decades. By the British North America Act it was arranged that Quebec, for the purpose of electoral arrangements, should be the pivotal province of the Dominion. To prevent the growth of an unwieldy House of Commons, Quebec was given a perpetual quota of 65 members and this has formed the basis for the allocation of representation to the other provinces. The electoral unit is determined by dividing the population of the Province of Quebec by 65. The unit thus obtained was 36,283 at the last census, as compared with 30,818 in 1911. The division of the population of each province by the unit figure gives the number of members to which each province is entitled, subject to certain saving provisions. For example, Prince Edward Island is by the census returns entitled to less than three members, but

there is a constitutional provision which declares that no province must have a smaller representation in the Commons than in the Senate, and as Prince Edward Island has four senators she has retained four members in the Commons. On the other hand Nova Scotia will lose two members and its representatives are planning a strong fight for amendments to the Act so as to keep their numbers intact. Ontario, on the figures, ought to lose one member, but she escapes loss by the benefit of another saving clause. The four western provinces gain between them a total of 12 members.

This gain of seats to the western provinces cannot fail to affect the political situation and will largely enure to the benefit of the new Progressive party who are strongest in these regions. The protectionists are apprehensive of a dangerous increase of free trade influences at Ottawa, and as a counterpoise are demanding that the unit of rural representation be brought up to the same level as the urban. Hitherto, all parties have accepted the principle that the electoral unit for rural constituencies should be appreciably smaller than the urban, and as a result the six cities of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Hamilton and London, with one-fifth of the population, have to-day only one-tenth of the membership of the Federal House. The rural members who control the situation are unwilling to give up their advantage, but in the end probably some compromise will be reached.

While the political power of Quebec has shewn a relative decline in the last thirty years, the French Canadians have found some consolation in the trickling of their stock into other provinces. Election experts calculate that to-day the French Canadians control almost one-third of the 245 Federal seats. But the most striking phenomenon has been the growth of the political influence of the west. In 1882 its four provinces sent only II members to Ottawa; by 1904 their contingent had only risen to 28; but to the next Parliament there will come 69 members from the territory lying west of the Great Lakes. The political power of the West is destined to increase steadily, and many good people in Eastern Canada lie awake at nights brooding over the awful possibilities of the day when the radical West, populated mainly by men and women who have never known Eastern Canada, will produce a parliamentary majority at Ottawa. To this fear which

is planted deep in French-Canadian bosoms, the lukewarmness of the present Federal Government towards schemes for the encouragement of British immigration is attributed by its detractors.

To sum up the 1921 census shows that Canada-though her pace of population-increase may disappoint the disciples of quantitative greatness-is growing steadily and on healthy lines. It cannot be denied that her annual loss by emigration is unfortunately large. Records at Washington show that between 1911 and 1921 no less than 820,469 immigrants entered the United States from Canada, and Lord Shaughnessy recently gave his high authority to the statement that if Canada had retained all her native-born children and her immigrants her population would have been almost two millions more. An antiquated protectionist system must bear some share of the blame for such a large emigration from a new country endowed with great resources, but a southward exodus is an ancient tale with all northern countries, as Scotland and the Scandinavian States can testify. In the end, however, it is the quality rather than the quantity of a population that counts, and the rigours of a climate which drives southward the people of softer natures and feebler constitutions leave the Dominion with a residue of picked efficiency and grit.

The truth is that the slackening of the pace of Canada's growth, as a result of the war, was a real blessing: for in the first decade of the century she was unable to digest the volume of immigration which was pouring into her gates. Her social and educational machinery was in many places hopelessly inadequate for the task of absorbing a mass of alien immigrants into the warp and woof of Canadian civilisation. Opportunity has now been found to remedy many of the deficiencies which hindered this important task and the formation of a National Council of Education, which is bending its efforts to a general improvement of the current standards of education and citizenship, is a notable landmark of progress. There are anxious souls who think that if the people of Irish Catholic birth and American origin were subtracted from the total of the British stocks, there might be secured in Canada a majority hostile to the British connection. But it would be an impossible task to weld together in a political combination all the voters who do not acknowledge a British racial connection, and no politicians would be so foolish as to attempt it.

The problem of Imperial relations, however, still remains a constant factor of disturbance and irritation in Canadian politics, and the steady growth of population is used as an effective argument by Sir Clifford Sifton and others who desire an end of the subordinate status still imposed on Canada by the terms of the British North America Act. If, however, the responsible statesmen display wisdom and foresight, and if the necessary political readjustments, which changed conditions of population and political outlook demand, are made, there is no reason why Canada, which to-day has about as large a population as Great Britain had in 1800, should not march on from strength to strength and perhaps a century hence be the most powerful unit in the British Commonwealth of Nations.

J. A. STEVENSON

VOL. 237. NO. 484.

W

THE FUTURE OF THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE

Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms. Cd. 9109. H.M. Stationery Office. 1918.

THE

HE subject of this article is the future of the Indian Civil Service, but no discussion of the future can be fruitful which fails to take the past and present into account, and something must be said by way of introduction regarding the nature of the Service, and the needs which have hitherto justified its existence. At the outset it may be well to explain that in India the words' Civil Service' carry a more restricted and precise meaning than in England. In this country the Civil Servant may be the head of a department, or a junior typist on its staff, the Secretary of the Post Office, or the postman who leaves letters at the door; but the Indian Civil Servant occupies a recognised position, both social and official, as a member of a definite organization, a corps d'élite maintained under the authority of Parliament to control and direct the general administration of what it is still correct to describe as the Great Dependency.

The expression 'general administration' is itself unfamiliar in Great Britain, which, unlike most countries, has hitherto failed to develop anything of the kind. In an English county town we look in vain for any active representative of the central government as a whole, though we can find representatives of particular departments; but no considerable Indian town is without an officer wielding, within the area assigned to him and the limits imposed, the general executive power of a despotic sovereign, a power transmitted from the Secretary of State to the Governor-General in his Council, thence to the governors of provinces, to the district officers under them, and to the subordinates whom the district officers control. Owing to historical causes, members of the Indian Civil Service may be found performing very various functions, judicial or executive, diplomatic or technical; but the main reason for the existence of the Service as a whole is the conduct of this general administration, and its business is, first, to interpret between sovereign and subjects in the process of deliberation, and, second, to enforce the sovereign's orders when a decision has been taken.