The Emigrant and his Prospects.
Those who really wish Canada well desire it to become a second Britain,
and not a mere second Texas. Those who wish it evil, and these comprise
the restless, unprovided race of politicians under whose incessant
agitation Canada has so long groaned, desire its Texian annexation to
the already overgrown States in its vicinity.
That it may become a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the
continent of America is my prayer, and the prayer too of one who
entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who
admires their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would
admire their institutions, based as they are upon those of England, if
the grand design of Washington had been carried out, and perfect freedom
of thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a
slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of the uneducated masses, a
sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing any
design for the aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and
degrading oppression of all who presume to hold religious opinions at
variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a land of
liberty!
To guard the respectable settler, who has a character at stake, and a
family with some little capital to lay out to better advantage than he
can at home, against the grievous and often fatal errors which have been
propagated for sinister motives by needy adventurers who have written
about Canada, or who are or have been agents for the sake only of the
remuneration which it brings, caring but little for the misery they have
entailed, I have undertaken to continue an account of this fine
province, where nothing is provided by Nature except fertile soil and a
healthy climate; the rest she leaves to unremitting labour and to the
exercise of judgment by the settler.
As I have already inferred, this work will contain nothing vituperative
of the United States, of that people who are the grandchildren of
Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and
security of Christendom.
I shall endeavour to render it as plain and unpretending as possible,
and shall not confine myself to studied rules or endeavours to make a
book, taking up my subject as suits my own leisure, which is not very
ample, and resuming or interrupting it at pleasure or convenience.
It will be necessary to enter more at large than in my preceding volumes
into the resources of Canada, and, for this end, Geology and other
scientific subjects must be introduced; but, as I dislike exceedingly
that heavy and gaudy veil of learning, that embroidered science, with
which modern taste conceals those secrets of Nature which have been so
partially unfolded, I shall not have frequent recourse to absurd Greek
derivations, which are very commonly borrowed for the occasion from
technical dictionaries, or lent by a classical friend; but, whenever
they must occur, the dictionary shall explain them, for I really think
it beneath the dignity of the lights of modern Geology to talk as they
do about the Placoids and the Ganoids, as the first created fishlike
beings, and of the Ctenoids and the Cycloids as the more recent finners.
It always puts me in mind of Shakespeare's magniloquence concerning "the
Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, of
antres vast and deserts idle," when he exhibited his learning in
language which no one, however, can imitate, and which he makes the lady
seriously incline and listen to, simply because she did not understand a
word that was said. So it is with the overdone and continual changing of
terms that now constantly occurs; insomuch that the terms of plain
science, instead of being simplified and brought within the reach of
ordinary capacities, is made as uncouth and as unintelligible as
possible, and totally beyond the reach of those who have no collegiate
education to boast of, and no good technical dictionary at hand to refer
to.
The present age is most prone to this false estimate of learning and to
public scientific display. If science, true science, yields to it,
learning will very soon vanish from the face of the earth again, and
nothing but monkish lore and the dark ages return.
There is a vast field open for research in Canada: it is yet a virgin
soil, both as respects its moral and its physical cultivation.
Therefore, plain facts are the best, and those made as level to the eye
as possible; for the amusing mistakes which a would-be learned man
makes, after a cursory perusal of anything scientific, only subject him
to silent derision.
A very old casual acquaintance of mine, a sort of man holding a rather
elevated rank, but originally from the great unwashed, who had risen by
mere chance, aided by a little borough influence, was talking to me one
day about some property of his in Western Canada, which he fancied had
rich minerals upon it. Accordingly, he had taken a preliminary Treatise
on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse
learnedly. "My land," quoth he, "is Silesia, and has a great bed of
sulphuret of pyrites." The poor gentleman, who had a vast opinion of
himself and always contradicted everybody about everything, meant that
his soil contained a deal of silica, and that iron pyrites was abundant
in it.
The importance of the annual migration from Britain is best evidenced by
the representation of the chief emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined.
In all the great sea-ports of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there are
emigrant agents appointed by the government, to whom application should
always be made for information, by every emigrant who has not the
advantage of friends in Canada to receive and guide him; and these
gentlemen prevent the trouble, expense, loss of time, and fraud, to
which the poor settlers are subjected by the crimps and agents, with
whom every sea-port abounds.
On their arrival in Canada, if ignorant of their way, they should apply
at Quebec to the government principal agent, who is stationed there for
the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice
or passage, according to the nature of the case.
It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at
first, for this rage causes distress, and ends frequently by their being
kidnapped into settling in the United States.
If, however, they are determined to go on to Western Canada, their
course is either to pay their own way, or to obtain assistance from the
government to send them on to Kingston, where another government agent
for Western Canada is stationed; and, as this gentleman has now acted in
that capacity for many years, he possesses a perfect knowledge of the
country and its resources, and of the wants and objects of the
settlers.
There is excellent land, and plenty of it to be obtained from the
British American Land Company in Lower Canada, in that portion called
"The Townships," which adjoin the states of Vermont and New York; and,
excepting that the winters are longer, the climate more severe, it is as
desirable as any other part of the province, and, in point of health,
perhaps more so, as it is sufficiently far from the great river and
lakes to make it less subject to ague; which, however, more or less, all
new countries in the temperate zone, well forested and watered, are
invariably the seat of, and which is increased in power and frequency in
proportion to the neighbourhood of fresh water in large bodies, and the
use of whiskey as a preventive.
From a statement of the number of emigrants to this colony for the last
sixteen years, compiled by A.C. Buchanan, Esq., chief emigrant agent, it
appears that, in the five years subsequently to 1829, the emigration
from the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three
years, from 1829 to 1832, the emigration exceeded that of the previous
ten years--the numbers being respectively, 125,063 and 121,170. In 1832,
the emigrants arrived reached the high number of 51,746; but the cholera
of that year was of so fatal a character on the St. Lawrence, that the
numbers in 1833 fell 22,062. This epidemic, coupled with the rebellions
of '37 and '38, materially checked the increased emigration commenced in
1836. In 1838, the number was only 3,266, and in 1839, 7,500. But, since
1840, emigration has again recovered, and, during the period of
navigation of 1845, it amounted to 27,354, of whom 2,612 arrived _via_
the United States.
The United States, however, received by far the largest proportion of
the emigration from Britain. At the port of New York alone, from 1st
November, 1844, to 31st October, 1845, there arrived--
From England and Scotland 10,653
From Ireland 38,300
-------
Total at New York 48,953
The number of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was
25,375.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. |
|----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------|
| |'29 to '33|'34 to '38|'39 to '43|'44 to '45| Total. |
| | | | | | |
| |----------|----------|----------|----------|---------|
|England. | 43,386 | 28,624 | 30,318 | 16,531 | 119,354 |
|Ireland. | 102,264 | 54,898 | 74,981 | 24,201 | 256,344 |
|Scotland. | 20,143 | 10,998 | 16,289 | 4,408 | 51,838 |
|British American| | | | | |
| Prov. &c. | 1,904 | 1,831 | 1,777 | 377 | 5,589 |
| |----------+----------+----------+----------+---------|
| | 167,697 | 96,351 | 123,860 | 45,517 | 433,425 |
+----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+
Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx
of population. The increase in the number of its inhabitants, between
1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000.
The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although
rather scantily, as Mr. Logan can, I dare say, testify, an exploration
of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and
mineralogy are concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and
zoology, will follow; and agriculture, that primary and most noble of
all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the
formation of district and local societies, which will do infinitely more
good than any system of government patronage for the advancement of the
welfare of the people could devise.
The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the
control of the executive and legislative bodies by the formation of a
board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the
government.
But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error
was committed in making the President, and consequently all the officers
and _employes_, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry of the
day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by
the fear of dismissal upon any change of the popular will, and
neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures
mere jobs.
This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to
be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will
hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and
at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only
rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to
fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former
volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has
created a finer country on the whole earth.
The soil is generally good, as that made by the decay of forests for
thousands of years upon substrata, chiefly formed of alluvion or
diluvion, the deposit from waters, must be. It is, moreover, from Quebec
to the Falls of St. Mary, almost a flat surface, intersected and
interlaced by numberless streams, and studded with small lakes, whilst
its littorale is a river unparalleled in the world, expanding into
enormous fresh water seas, abounding with fish.
If the tropical luxuries are absent, if its winters are long and
excessively severe, yet it yields all the European fruits abundantly,
and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil
and the great heat of the summer. Maize, or Indian corn, flourishes, and
is more wholesome and better than that produced in the warm South. The
crops of potato, that apple of the earth, as the French so justly term
it, are equal, if not superior, to those of any other climate; whilst
all the vegetables of the temperate regions of the old world grow with
greater luxuriance than in their original fields. I have successively
and successfully cultivated the tomato, the melon, and the capsicum, in
the open air, for several seasons, at Kingston and Toronto, which are
not the richest or the best parts of Western Canada, as far as
vegetation is concerned. Tobacco grows well in the western district, and
where is finer wheat harvested than in Western Canada?--whilst hay, and
that beauty of a landscape, the rich green sod, the velvet carpet of the
earth, are abundant and luxuriant.
If the majesty of vegetation is called in question, and intertropical
plants brought forward in contrast, even the woods and trackless
forests of Guiana, where the rankest of luxuriance prevails, will not do
more than compete with the glory of the primeval woods of Canada. I know
of nothing in this world capable of exciting emotions of wonder and
adoration more directly, than to travel alone through its forests.
Pines, lifting their hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines
his head so far backwards as to be painful to his organization, with
trunks which require fathoms of line to span them; oaks, of the most
gigantic form; the immense and graceful weeping elm; enormous poplars,
whose magnitude must be seen to be conceived; lindens, equally vast;
walnut trees of immense size; the beautiful birch, and the wild cherry,
large enough to make tables and furniture of.
Oh, the gloom and the glory of these forests, and the deep reflection
that, since they were first created by the Divine fiat, civilized man
has never desecrated them with his unsparing devastations; that a
peculiar race, born for these solitudes, once dwelt amidst their
shades, living as Nature's woodland children, until a more subtile being
than the serpent of Eden crept amongst them, and, with his glittering
novelties and dangerous beauty, caused their total annihilation! I see,
in spirit, the red hunter, lofty, fearless, and stern, stalking in his
painted nudity, and displaying a form which Apollo might have envied,
amidst the everlasting and silent woods; I see, in spirit, the bearded
stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arms and his more deadly
fire-water, conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied
wealth of gorgeous beads and of gaudy clothing.
The scene changes, the proud Indian is at the feet of his ensnarer;
disease has relaxed his iron sinews; drunkenness has debased his mind;
and the myriad crimes and vices of civilized Europe have combined to
sweep the aborigines of the soil from the face of the forest earth. The
forest groans beneath the axe; but, after a few years, the scene again
changes; fertile fields, orchards and gardens, delight the eye; the
city, and the town, and the village spires rise, and where two solitary
wigwams of the red hunter were once alone occasionally observed, twenty
thousand white Canadians now worship the same Great Author of the
existence of all mankind.
And to increase these fields, these orchards, these gardens, these
villages, these towns, and these cities, year after year, thirty
thousand of the children of Britain cross the broad Atlantic: and what
seeks this mass of human beings, braving the perils of the ocean and the
perils of the land? Competence and wealth! The former, by prudence, is
soon attainable; the acquisition of the latter uncertain and fickle.
No free grants of land are now given, but the settler may obtain them
upon easy terms from the government, or the Canada and British American
companies.
The settler with a small capital cannot do better than purchase out and
out. Instalments are a bad mode of purchasing; for, if all should not
turn out right, instalments are sometimes difficult to meet; and the
very best land, in the best locations, as we shall hereafter see, is to
be had from 7s. 6d., if in the deep Bush, as the forest is called; to
10s., if nearer a market; or 15s. and 20s., if very eligibly situated.
Thus for two hundred pounds a settler can buy two hundred acres of good
land, can build an excellent house for two hundred and fifty more, and
stock his farm with another fifty, as a beginning; or, in other words,
he can commence Canadian life for five hundred pounds sterling, with
every prospect before him, if he has a family, of leaving them
prosperous and happy. But he and they must work, work, work. He and all
his sons must avoid whiskey, that bane of the backwoods, as they would
avoid the rattlesnake, which sometimes comes across their path. Whiskey
and wet feet destroy more promising young men in Canada than ague and
fever, that scourge of all well watered woody countries; for the ague
and fever seldom kill but with the assistance of the dram and of
exposure.
Men nurtured in luxury or competence at home, as soon as the unfailing
_ennui_ arising from want of society in the backwoods begins to succeed
the excitement of settling, too frequently drink, and in many cases
drink from their waking hour until they sink at night into sottish
sleep. This is peculiarly the case where there is no village nor town
within a day's journey; and thus many otherwise estimable young men
become habitual drunkards, and sink from the caste of gentlemen
gradually into the dregs of society, whilst their wives and families
suffer proportionably.
In Lower Canada, this vice does not prevail to the same extent as in the
upper portion of the province. The French Canadians are not addicted to
the vice of drinking ardent spirits as a people, although the lumberers
and voyageurs shorten their lives very considerably by the use of
whiskey. The _lumberers_, who are the cutters and conveyers of timber,
pass a short and excited existence.
In the winter, buried in the eternal forest, far, far away from the
haunts of man, they chop and hew; in the summer, they form the timber,
boards, staves, &c., into rafts, which are conveyed down the great lakes
and the rivers St. Lawrence and Ottawa to Quebec--on these rafts they
live and have their summer being. Hard fare in plenty, such as salt pork
and dough cakes; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet.
Tea and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in
winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all
the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of
the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport
of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods,
combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer,
whose _morale_ is not much better than his _physicale_.
Picture to yourself, child of luxury, sitting on a cushioned sofa, in a
room where the velvet carpet renders a footfall noiseless, where art is
exhausted to afford comfort, and where even the hurricane cannot disturb
your perusal of this work, a wood reaching without limit, excepting the
oceans either of salt or fresh water which surround Canada, and where to
lose the track is hopeless starvation and death; figure the giant pines
towering to the clouds, gloomy and Titan-like, throwing their vast arms
to the skyey influences, and making a twilight of mid-day, at whose
enormous feet a thicket of bushes, almost as high as your head, prevents
your progress without the pioneer axe; or a deep and black swamp for
miles together renders it necessary to crawl from one fallen monarch of
the wood onwards to the decaying and prostrate bole of another, with an
occasional plunge into the mud and water, which they bridge; eternal
silence reigning, disturbed only by your feeble efforts to advance; and
you may form some idea of a red pine land, rocky and uneven, or a cedar
swamp, black as night, dark, dismal, and dangerous.
Here, after you have hewed or crept your toiling way, you see, some
yards or some hundred yards, as the forest is close or open, before
you, a light blue curling smoke amongst the dank and lugubrious scene;
you hear a dull, distant, heavy, sudden blow, frequent and deadened,
followed at long intervals by a tremendous rending, crashing,
overwhelming rush; then all is silent, till the voice of the guardian of
man is heard growling, snarling, or barking outright, as you advance
towards the blue smoke, which has now, by an eddy of the wind, filled a
large space between the trees.
You stand before the fire, made under three or four sticks set up
tenwise, to which a large cauldron is hung, bubbling and seething, with
a very strong odour of fat pork; a boy, dirty and ill-favoured, with a
sharp glittering axe, looks very suspiciously at you, but calls off his
wolfish dog, who sneaks away.
A moment shows you a long hut, formed of logs of wood, with a roof of
branches, covered by birch-bark, and by its side, or near the fire,
several nondescript sties or pens, apparently for keeping pigs in,
formed of branches close to the ground, either like a boat turned
upside down, or literally as a pigsty is formed, as to shape.
In the large hut, which is occasionally more luxurious and made of slabs
of wood or of rough boards, if a saw-mill is within reasonable distance,
and there is a passable wood road, or creek, or rivulet, navigable by
canoes, you see some barrel or two of pork, and of flour, or biscuit, or
whiskey, some tools, and some old blankets or skins. Here you are in the
lumberer's winter home--I cannot call him woodman, it would disgrace the
ancient and ballad-sung craft; for the lumberer is not a gentle woodman,
and you need not sing sweetly to him to "spare that tree."
The larger dwelling is the hall, the common hall, and the pig-sties the
sleeping-places. I presume that such a circumstance as pulling off
habiliments or ablution seldom occurs; they roll themselves in a blanket
or skin, if they have one, and, as to water, they are so frequently in
it during the summer, that I suppose they wash half the year
unintentionally. Fat pork, the fattest of the fat, is the lumberer's
luxury; and, as he has the universal rifle or fowling-piece, he kills a
partridge, a bear, or a deer, now and then.
I was exploring last year some woods in a newly settled township, the
township of Seymour West, in the Newcastle district of Upper Canada,
with a view to see the nakedness of the land, which had been represented
to me as flowing with milk and honey, as all new settlements of course
are said to do. I wandered into the lonely but beautiful forest, with a
companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers
were robbing him and every settler around of their best pine timber.
After some toiling and tracing the sound of the axes, few and far
between, felling in the distance, we came upon the unvarying boy at
cookery, the axe, and the dog.
My conductor at once saw the extent of the mischief going on, and,
finding that the gang, although distant from the camp-fire, was
numerous, advised that we should retrace our steps. We however
interrogated the boy, who would scarcely answer, and pretended to know
nothing. The dog began to be inquisitive too, and one of the dogs we had
with us venturing a little too near a savoury piece of pork, the nature
of the young half-bred ruffian suddenly blazed out, and the axe was
uplifted to kill poor Dash. I happened to have a good stick, and
interfered to prevent dog-murder, upon which the wood-demon ejaculated
that he would as soon let out my guts as the dog's, and therefore my
companion had to show his gun; for showing his teeth would have been of
little avail with the young savage.
The settlers are afraid of the lumberers; and thus all the finest land,
near rivers, creeks, or transport of any kind, is swept of the timber to
such an extent that you must go now far, far back from the Lakes, the
St. Lawrence, or the Ottawa, before you can see the forest in its
primeval grandeur.
This robbery has been carried on in so barefaced and extensive a manner,
that the chief adventurer, usually a merchant or trader, who supplies
the axe and canoemen with pay in his shop goods, cent. per cent. above
their value, becomes enriched.
The lumberer's life is truly an unhappy one, for, when he reaches the
end of the raft's voyage, whatever money he may have made goes to the
fiddle, the female, or the fire-water; and he starts again as poor as at
first, living perhaps by a rare chance to the advanced age, for a
lumberer, of forty years.
And a curious sight is a raft, joined together not with ropes but with
the limbs and thews of the swamp or blue beech, which is the natural
cordage of Canada and is used for scaffolding and packing.
A raft a quarter of a mile long--I hope I do not exaggerate, for it may
be half a mile, never having measured one but by the eye--with its
little huts of boards, its apologies for flags and streamers, its
numerous little masts and sails, its cooking caboose, and its
contrivances for anchoring and catching the wind by slanting boards,
with the men who appear on its surface as if they were walking on the
lake, is curious enough; but to see it in _drams_, or detached portions,
sent down foaming and darting along the timber slides of the Ottawa or
the restless and rapid Trent, is still more so; and fearful it is to
observe its _conducteur_, who looks in the rapid by no means so much at
his ease as the functionary of that name to whom the Paris diligence is
entrusted.
Numberless accidents happen; the drams are torn to pieces by the
violence of the stream; the rafts are broken by storm and tempest; the
men get drunk and fall over; and altogether it appears extraordinary
that a raft put together at the Trent village for its final voyage to
Quebec should ever reach its destination, the transport being at least
four hundred and fifty miles, and many go much farther, through an open
and ever agitated fresh water sea, and amongst the intricate channels of
The Thousand Islands, and down the tremendous rapids of the Longue
Sault, the Gallope, the Cedars, the Cascades, &c.
But a new trade, has lately commenced on Lake Ontario, which will break
up some of the hardships of the rafting. Old steamboats of very large
size, when no longer serviceable in their vocation, are now cut down,
and perhaps lengthened, masted, and rigged as barques or ships, and
treated in every respect like the Atlantic timber-vessels. Into these
three-masters, these Leviathans of Lake Ontario, the timber, boards,
staves, handspikes, &c., from the interior are now shipped, and the
timber carried to the head of the St. Lawrence navigation.
One step more, and they will, as soon as the canals are widened, proceed
from Lake Superior to London without a raft being ever made.
That this will soon occur is very evident; for a large vessel of this
kind, as big as a frigate, and named the Goliath, is at the moment that
I am writing preparing at Toronto, near the head of Lake Ontario, a
thousand miles from the open sea, for a voyage direct to the West Indies
and back again. Success to her! What with the railroad from Halifax to
Lake Huron, from the Atlantic Ocean to the great fresh ocean of the
West--what with the electric telegraph now in operation on the banks of
the Niagara by the Americans--what with the lighting of villages on the
shores of Lake Erie with natural gas, as Fredonia is lit, and as the
city of the Falls of Niagara, if ever it is built, will also be, there
is no telling what will happen: at all events, the poor lumberer must
benefit in the next generation, for the worst portion of his toils will
be done away with for ever.
Settler, never become a lumberer, if you can avoid it.
But, as we have in this favourite hobbyhorse style of ours, which causes
description to start up as recollections occur, accompanied the lumberer
on his voyage to that lumberer's Paradise, Quebec, whither he has
conducted his charge to The Coves, for the culler to cull, the marker to
mark, the skipper to ship, and the lumber-merchant to get the best
market he can for it, so we shall return for a short time to Lower
Canada, to talk a little about settlement there.
As I hinted before, Lower Canada is too much decried as a country to
re-commence the world in; but the Anglo-Saxon and Milesian populace are
nevertheless beginning to discover its value, and are very rapidly
increasing both in numbers and importance. The French Canadian yeoman,
or small farmer, has an alacrity at standing still; it is only _le
notaire_ and _le medecin_ that advance; so that, if emigration goes on
at the rate it has done since the rebellion, the old country folks will,
before fifty more years pass over, outnumber and outvote, by ten times,
Jean Baptiste, which is a pity, for a better soul than that merry
mixture of bonhomie and phlegm, the French Canadian is, the wide world's
surface does not produce. Visionary notions of _la gloire de la nation
Canadienne_, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for
distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the _bonnet rouge_
awhile: but he has superadded the thinking cap since; and, although he
may not readily forget the sad lesson he received, yet he has no more
idea of being annexed to the United States than I have of being Grand
Lama. In fact, I really believe that the merciful policy which has been
shown, and the wise measure of making Montreal the seat of government,
and thus practically demonstrating the advantage of the institutions of
England by daily lessons in the heart of their dear country, has done
more to recall the Canadians to a sense of the real value of the
connexion with Great Britain than all the protocols of diplomatists, or
all the powder that ever saltpetre generated, could have achieved.
Pursue a perfectly impartial course, as you ought and must do, towards
the Canadians, and show them that they are as much British citizens as
the people of Toronto are, and you may count upon their loyalty and
devotion without fear. They know they never can be an independent
nation; that folly has been dreamed out, and the fumes of the vision are
evaporating.
They now know and feel that annexation to the great Republic in their
neighbourhood will swamp their nationality more effectively than the red
or the blue coats of England can ever do, will desecrate their altars,
will portion out their lands, will nullify their present importance, and
render them an isolated race, forgotten and unsought for, as the
Iroquois of the last century, who, from being the children and owners of
the land, the true _enfans du sol_, are now--where? The soil, had it
voice, could alone reply, for on its surface they are not.
We must never in England form a false estimate of the French Canadian,
because a few briefless lawyers or saddle-bag medical men urged them
into rebellion. Their feelings and spirit are not of the same _genre_ as
the feelings and spirit which animated the hideous soul of the
_poissardes_ and _canaille_ of Paris in 1792. There is very little or no
poverty in Lower Canada; every man who will work there, can work; and it
is a nation rather of small farmers than of classes, with the ideas of
independence which property, however small, invariably generates in the
human breast; but with that other idea also which urges it to preserve
ancient landmarks.
It is chiefly in the large towns and in their neighbourhood that the
desire for exclusive nationality still exists, fostered by a rabid
appetite for distinction in some ardent and reckless adventurers from
the British ranks, who care little what is undermost so long as they are
uppermost.
The hostility of the British settlers to the French is by no means so
great as is so carefully and constantly described, and would altogether
cease, if not kept continually alive by Upper Canadian demonstration,
and that desire to rule exclusively which has so long been the bane of
this fine colony.
It reminds one always of the morbid hatred of France, which existed
thirty years ago in England, when Napoleon was believed, by the lower
classes--ay, and by some of the higher too--to be Apollyon in earnest.
I remember an old lord of the old school, whose family honours were not
of a hundred years, and whose ancestors had been respectable traders,
saying to me, a short time before he died, that Republican notions had
spread so much from our peace with infidel France, that he should yet
live to see those who possessed talent or energy enough among the middle
class, take those honours which he was so proud of, and with the titles
also, the estates.
Look, said he, at the absurd decoration showered on the _savans_ of
France, Baron Cuvier, for instance; and he fell into a passion, and,
being a French scholar, sang forth, in a paroxysm of gout, this
_refrain_:--
"Travaillez, travaillez, bon tonnelier,
Racommodez, racommodez, ton Cuvier."
And yet he was by no means an ignorant man--was at heart a true John
Bull, and had travelled and seen the world. He was blinded by an
unquenchable hatred of France, a hatred which has now ceased in England
in consequence of the facility of intercourse, but which is revived in
France against England by those who think _la gloire_ preferable to
peace and honour.
The miserable feudal system in Lower Canada has kept the French
population in abeyance; that population is literally dormant, and the
resources of the country unused; a Seigneur, now often anything but a
Frenchman, holds an immense tract, parcelled out into little slips
amongst a peasantry, whose ideas are as limited as their lands.
Generation after generation has tilled these patches, until they are
exhausted; and thus the few proprietors who have been able to emancipate
themselves from the Seignoral thraldom sell as fast as they can obtain
purchasers; and the Seignories lapse, by failure of descent or by
cutting off the entail, as it may be termed, under the dominion of
foreigners, to the people.
It is surprising that British capitalists do not turn their attention
more to Lower Canada, where land is thus to be bought very cheap, and
which only requires manuring, a treatment that it rarely receives from
a Canadian, to bring it into heart again, and where the vast extent of
the British townships, held in free and common soccage, opens such a
field for the agriculturist.
These townships are rapidly opening up and improving, and the sales of
the British American Land Company may in round numbers be said to
average L20,000 a year, or more than 40,000 acres, averaging ten
shillings an acre.
The day's wages for a labourer on a farm in Lower Canada may be stated
at two shillings currency, about one shilling and eightpence sterling,
with food and lodging; but, excepting in the towns and in the eastern
townships, the labourers are Canadians, elsewhere chiefly Irish. In the
large towns also they are Irish, and two shillings and sixpence is the
usual price of a day's work at Montreal.
There is a great demand for English or Scotch labourers in the townships
where provisions are reasonable, and the materials for building, either
lime, stone, brick, or wood, also very moderate in price from their
abundance.
Cultivated, or rather cleared, farms may be purchased now near the
settlements for about six pounds per acre, with very often dwelling and
farms on them, and a clear title may be readily obtained, after inquiry
at the registry office of the county, to see whether any mortgage or
other encumbrance exist--a course always to be adopted, both in Upper
and Lower Canada. A settler must take the precaution of tracing the
original grant, and that the land, if he buys from an individual, is
neither Crown nor Clergy reserve, nor set apart for school or any other
public purposes. Never buy, moreover, of a squatter, or land on which a
squatter is located, for the law is very favourable to these gentry.
A squatter is a man who, axe in hand, with his gun, dog, and baggage,
sets himself down in the deep forest, to clear and improve; and this he
very frequently does, both upon public and private property; and the
Government is lenient, so that, if he makes well of it, he generally
has a right of pre-emption, or perhaps pays up only instalments, and
then sells and goes deeper into the bush. Every way there is difficulty
about squatted land, and very often the squatter will significantly
enough hint that there is such a thing as a rifle in his log castle.
Squatters are usually Americans, of the very lowest grade, or the most
ignorant of the Irish, who really believe they have a right to the soil
they occupy.
I do not profess to give an account of the Eastern Townships; the
prospectus of the British American Land Company will do that; and, as I
have never been through them entirely, so I could only advance
assertion; but I believe that they are admirably adapted for English and
Scotch settlers, and that, bounded as they are by the French Canadians
on one side, and by the United States on the other, with every facility
for roads, canals, and railways, they must become one of the richest,
most and important portions of Canada before half a century has passed
over; but it will take that time, notwithstanding railways and
locomotives, to make Jean Baptiste a useful agriculturist; and the fly
must be eradicated from the wheat before Lower Canada can ever come
within a great distance of competition in the flour market with the
upper province.
Take a steamboat voyage from Quebec to Montreal, and you pass through
French Canada; for, although there are very extensive settlements of the
race below Quebec till they are lost in the rugged mountains of
Gaspesia, yet the main body of _habitants_ rest upon the low and
tranquil shores of the St. Lawrence, for one hundred and eighty miles
between the Castle of St. Lewis and the Cathedral of Montreal. The
farm-houses, neat, and invariably whitewashed, line the river,
particularly on the left bank, like a cantonment, and go back to the
north for, at the utmost, ten or twelve miles into the then boundless
wilderness.
The cultivated ground is in narrow slips, fenced by the customary snake
fence, which is nothing more than slabs of trees split coarsely into
rails, and set up lengthways in a zig-zag form to give them stability,
with struts, or riders, at the angles, to bind them. These farms are
about nine hundred feet in width, and four or five miles in depth, being
the concessions or allotments made originally by the _seigneurs_ to the
_censitaires_, or tillers of the soil. Every here and there, a long road
is left, with cross ones, to obtain access to the farms, much in the
same way, but not near so conveniently, or well done, as the concession
lines in Upper Canada, which embrace large spaces of a hundred acre or
two hundred acre lots, including many of these lots, and giving a
sixty-six feet or a forty foot road, as the case may be, and thus
dividing the country into a series of large parallelograms, and making
every farm accessible.
Each Lower French Canadian farmer is an independent yeoman, excepting as
bound to the soil, and to certain seignorial dues and privileges, which
are, however, trifling, and far from burthensome. Taxes are unknown,
and they cheerfully support their priesthood.
It is not generally known in England that the feudal tenure--although
very laughable and absurd at this time of day, and from which some
seigneurs, but never those of unmixed French blood, are disposed to
claim titles equivalent to the baronage of England, with incomes of
about a thousand a year, or at most two, and manorial houses, resembling
very much a substantial Buckinghamshire grazier's chateau--was
originally established by the French monarchs for wise, highly useful,
and benevolent purposes.
These seigneuries were parcelled out in very large tracts of forest
along the banks of the St. Lawrence, or the rivers and bays of Lower
Canada, on the condition that they should be again parcelled out among
those who would engage to cultivate them in the strips above-mentioned.
Thus re-granted, the _seigneur_ could not eject the _habitant_, but was
allowed to receive a nominal or feudal rent from the vassal, and the
usual droits. These droits are, first, the barbarous "_lods et
ventes_," or one thirteenth of the money upon every transfer which the
_habitant_ makes by sale only; but the original rent can never be
raised, whatever value the land may have attained. The rights of the
mill, that old European appanage of the lord of the soil, were also
reserved to the seigneur, who alone can build mills within his domain,
or use the waters within his boundaries for mechanical purposes; but he
must erect them at convenient distances, and must make and repair roads.
The miller, therefore, takes toll of the grist, which is another source
of seignorial revenue, although not a very great one, for the toll is,
excepting the miller's thumb rights, not very large.
The crown of England is the lord paramount or suzerain, and demands a
tax of one fifth of the purchase-money of each seignory sold or
transferred by the lord of the manor.
By law, the lands cannot be subdivided, and if a seigneurie is sold it
cannot be sold in parts, nor can any compromise with the habitants for
rent, or any other claim or incumbrance, be made.
An institution like this paralyzes the resident, paralyzes the settler,
and destroys that aristocracy for whose benefit it was created; for it
prevents the lord of the manor from ever becoming rich, or taking much
interest in the improvement of his domain; and thus every thing
continues as it was a hundred years ago. The British emigrant pauses ere
he buys land thus enthralled; and almost all the old French families,
who dated from Charlemagne, Clovis, or Pepin, from the Merovingian or
Carlovingian monarchies, have disappeared and dwindled away, and their
places have been supplied by the more enterprising, or the _nouveau
riche_ men of the old world, or by restless, acute lawyers, and
metaphysical body-curers.
It was no wonder, therefore, that, upon the removal of the seat of
government from Toronto, and the appointment of a governor-general
untrammelled by the lieutenant governorship of Western Canada, over
which he had had before no control, that it should be considered
desirable by degrees to introduce the English land system throughout
Canada, and that parliamentary inquiry should be made into the necessity
of abolishing all feudal taxation. In Montreal this has been done, and,
as the seignoral rights of succession lapse, it will soon be done every
where, for the recent enactments have emancipated many already.
But no sensible or feeling mind will desire to see the French Canadian
driven to break up all at once habits formed by ages of contentment;
and, as it does not press upon them beyond their ready endurance, why
should we, to please a few rich capitalists or merchants, suddenly force
a British population into the heart of French Canada?
Jean Baptiste is too good a fellow to desire this. On our part, we
should not forget his truly amiable character; we should not forget the
services he rendered to us, when our children fought to drive us from
our last hold on the North American continent; we should not forget his
worthy and excellent priesthood; nor should we ever lose sight of the
fact, that he is contented under the old system. Above all, we should
never forget that he fought our battles when his Gallic sires joined our
revolted children.
I feel persuaded that, if an unhappy war must take place between the
United States and England, the French Canadians will prove, as they did
before on a similar occasion, loyal to a man.
All animosity, all heart-burning, will be forgotten, and the old French
glory will shine again, as it did under De Salaberry.
Ma foi, nous ne sommes pas perdus, encore; and some hero of the war has
only to rouse himself and cry, as Roland did,
Suivez, mon panage eclatant,
Francais ainsi que ma banniere;
Qu'il soit point du ralliement,
Vous savez tous quel prix attend
Le brave, qui dans la carriere,
Marche sur le pas de Roland.
Mourons pour notre patrie
C'est le sort le plus beau et le plus digne d'envie.