CANADA 
235 
be fairly set aside as negligible. The geologist sometimes has good 
fortune of the same kind ; an excavation lays bare a series of super- 
imposed strata which tell their tale beyond misinterpretation. 
For the economist, the issue of inconvertible paper money has at 
times approached the same sort of simplicity; yet even here the 
phenomena, tho they may be analyzed with ease as regards the 
outstanding train of causation, are often by no means easy of 
interpretation as regards important details. The Canadian epi- 
sode described in the preceding pages unfolds itself as if planned 
for the economist’s purposes. It comes as near to experiment 
as he can ever expect. A single cause came to operate on Canada’s 
international trade — the import of capital. This is putting the 
case too strongly ; the isolation of the given cause was not perfect ; 
others also had some influence. But the import of capital was so 
great, overshadowed so completely all others, that there can be no 
error in attributing to this the main economic changes which 
appeared. We have a case in which on the one hand economic 
theory had been fully developed on deductive grounds — in 
which an analysis had been made of what might be expected to 
happen under given conditions. And on the other hand we have 
just those conditions actually present, and the ensuing series of 
phenomena passing before our eye with singular clearness. It is 
rare that the possibility of verifying the deductions of theory is 
found so successfully; and it is of no little significance that for 
this particular sort of situation the conclusions of theory prove to 
be so completely verified.