To the Earl of ----.
Silleri, April 14.
England, however populous, is undoubtedly, my Lord, too small to
afford very large supplies of people to her colonies: and her people
are also too useful, and of too much value, to be suffered to emigrate,
if they can be prevented, whilst there is sufficient employment for
them at home.
It is not only our interest to have colonies; they are not only
necessary to our commerce, and our greatest and surest sources of
wealth, but our very being as a powerful commercial nation depends on
them: it is therefore an object of all others most worthy our
attention, that they should be as flourishing and populous as
possible.
It is however equally our interest to support them at as little
expence of our own inhabitants as possible: I therefore look on the
acquisition of such a number of subjects as we found in Canada, to be a
much superior advantage to that of gaining ten times the immense tract
of land ceded to us, if uncultivated and destitute of inhabitants.
But it is not only contrary to our interest to spare many of our own
people as settlers in America; it must also be considered, that, if we
could spare them, the English are the worst settlers on new lands in
the universe.
Their attachment to their native country, especially amongst the
lower ranks of people, is so very strong, that few of the honest and
industrious can be prevailed on to leave it; those therefore who go,
are generally the dissolute and the idle, who are of no use any where.
The English are also, though industrious, active, and enterprizing,
ill fitted to bear the hardships, and submit to the wants, which
inevitably attend an infant settlement even on the most fruitful lands.
The Germans, on the contrary, with the same useful qualities, have a
patience, a perseverance, an abstinence, which peculiarly fit them for
the cultivation of new countries; too great encouragement therefore
cannot be given to them to settle in our colonies: they make better
settlers than our own people; and at the same time their numbers are an
acquisition of real strength where they fix, without weakening the
mother country.
It is long since the populousness of Europe has been the cause of
her sending out colonies: a better policy prevails; mankind are
enlightened; we are now convinced, both by reason and experience, that
no industrious people can be too populous.
The northern swarms were compelled to leave their respective
countries, not because those countries were unable to support them, but
because they were too idle to cultivate the ground: they were a
ferocious, ignorant, barbarous people, averse to labor, attached to
war, and, like our American savages, believing every employment not
relative to this favorite object, beneath the dignity of man.
Their emigrations therefore were less owing to their populousness,
than to their want of industry, and barbarous contempt of agriculture
and every useful art.
It is with pain I am compelled to say, the late spirit of
encouraging the monopoly of farms, which, from a narrow short-sighted
policy, prevails amongst our landed men at home, and the alarming
growth of celibacy amongst the peasantry which is its necessary
consequence, to say nothing of the same ruinous increase of celibacy in
higher ranks, threaten us with such a decrease of population, as will
probably equal that caused by the ravages of those scourges of heaven,
the sword, the famine, and the pestilence.
If this selfish policy continues to extend itself, we shall in a few
years be so far from being able to send emigrants to America, that we
shall be reduced to solicit their return, and that of their posterity,
to prevent England's becoming in its turn an uncultivated desart.
But to return to Canada; this large acquisition of people is an
invaluable treasure, if managed, as I doubt not it will be, to the best
advantage; if they are won by the gentle arts of persuasion, and the
gradual progress of knowledge, to adopt so much of our manners as tends
to make them happier in themselves, and more useful members of the
society to which they belong: if with our language, which they should
by every means be induced to learn, they acquire the mild genius of our
religion and laws, and that spirit of industry, enterprize, and
commerce, to which we owe all our greatness.
Amongst the various causes which concur to render France more
populous than England, notwithstanding the disadvantage of a less
gentle government, and a religion so very unfavorable to the increase
of mankind, the cultivation of vineyards may be reckoned a principal
one; as it employs a much greater number of hands than even agriculture
itself, which has however infinite advantages in this respect above
pasturage, the certain cause of a want of people wherever it prevails
above its due proportion.
Our climate denies us the advantages arising from the culture of
vines, as well as many others which nature has accorded to France; a
consideration which should awaken us from the lethargy into which the
avarice of individuals has plunged us, and set us in earnest on
improving every advantage we enjoy, in order to secure us by our native
strength from so formidable a rival.
The want of bread to eat, from the late false and cruel policy of
laying small farms into great ones, and the general discouragement of
tillage which is its consequence, is in my opinion much less to be
apprehended than the want of people to eat it.
In every country where the inhabitants are at once numerous and
industrious, there will always be a proportionable cultivation.
This evil is so very destructive and alarming, that, if the great
have not virtue enough to remedy it, it is to be hoped it will in time,
like most great evils, cure itself.
Your Lordship enquires into the nature of this climate in respect to
health. The air being uncommonly pure and serene, it is favorable to
life beyond any I ever knew: the people live generally to a very
advanced age; and are remarkably free from diseases of every kind,
except consumptions, to which the younger part of the inhabitants are a
good deal subject.
It is however a circumstance one cannot help observing, that they
begin to look old much sooner than the people in Europe; on which my
daughter observes, that it is not very pleasant for women to come to
reside in a country where people have a short youth, and a long old
age.
The diseases of cold countries are in general owing to want of
perspiration; for which reason exercise, and even dissipation, are here
the best medicines.
The Indians therefore shewed their good sense in advising the
French, on their first arrival, to use dancing, mirth, chearfulness,
and content, as the best remedies against the inconveniences of the
climate.
I have already swelled this letter to such a length, that I must
postpone to another time my account of the peculiar natural
productions of Canada; only observing, that one would imagine heaven
intended a social intercourse between the most distant nations, by
giving them productions of the earth so very different each from the
other, and each more than sufficient for itself, that the exchange
might be the means of spreading the bond of society and brotherhood
over the whole globe.
In my opinion, the man who conveys, and causes to grow, in any
country, a grain, a fruit, or even a flower, it never possessed before,
deserves more praise than a thousand heroes: he is a benefactor, he is
in some degree a creator.
I have the honor to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's &c.
William Fermor.