Canadian view of the American Struggle--English Officers in
the States--My own position in the States and in Canada--The
Ursulines in Quebec--General Montcalm--French Canadians--Imperial
Honours--Celts and Saxons--Salmon Fishing--Early Government of
Canada--Past and Future.
Whilst I was in Quebec the American papers ceased not to record
great Union successes, impending expeditions, and, as is their
wont, to throw out hints of some inscrutable woe conceived by
the head of Stanton, and to be wrought by the arm of McClellan
on the South. “Jeff. Davis going to Texas or Mexico--The neck
of the rebellion broken--Our young Napoleon preparing for the
last grand campaign.” Many of our officers were very anxious to
visit the Federal armies, but the tone of the Northern press was
so exceedingly virulent and insulting toward Englishmen, that
the authorities, mistaking their license for the real opinion of
Americans, discouraged applications for leave as much as possible.
This was to be regretted; the more so that those officers who went
from Canada to the States were not provided with any official
letters, and were, indeed, in some instances, misguided so far as
to conceal their military character. It could not but have been
most useful to our officers to have been enabled to take fair
measure of the system and capability of an American army, North
or South; to have formed an estimate of their generals and of the
value of their several arms--cavalry, artillery, and infantry,
each of which presented conspicuous examples of what to avoid,
more especially the first, whilst the second had peculiar features
worthy of study, and the third was a very wonderful illustration of
the volunteer principle.
When I represented the importance of sending officers to the
armies for the special purpose of examining and reporting on their
condition, I was met by the reply that it would be a violation of
neutrality to dispatch commissioners to the Federal army, unless
similar officers were sent to the Confederate headquarters; and
that it would not be possible to adopt the latter step, as the
Washington Government would not grant them leave to go through the
lines, and would resent the proposal. When some officers were at
last dispatched with an official sanction to the army at Yorktown,
they made their appearance in a forlorn, destitute, and helpless
condition, which made their companions in arms blush for them.
For myself, I had every reason to believe that no objection would
be made to my accompanying the army under General McClellan.
Several senators who had given me their good wishes, were most
desirous that I should be able to set off an account of a victory
against the narrative of the retreat from Bull Bun. Although I had
been recovering a little from the effects of the ludicrous and
malignant falsehoods circulated against me up to the Trent affair,
I was _très mal vu_ in some quarters in Washington, and of course I
was included in the general outburst against all British subjects
with which the surrender of Mason and Slidell was accompanied.
In Canada I had recovered health and spirits; nay, more--some
small shreds of popularity in the States. The secretaries of
literary institutions renewed their requests for lectures, the
autograph hunters sought the post-office once more with their
flattering though ill-spelt missives; but there was no inducement
to return to the States till the army of McClellan was actually
about to take the field. The exploits of the army of the West
had, indeed, attracted my eyes in that direction. The capture of
Fort Henry and Fort Donelson promised well for its future career,
but if I travelled so far out of my way I should have lost my
chance of seeing the most brilliant and important campaign. The
chief interest was certainly concentrated on the Potomac, and in
the operations against Richmond. The West was far away, and it
would have been a chance against my letters reaching home so as
to anticipate the exaggerated illusions of the New York journals.
And so I quietly waited and watched till the news from the States
became so triumphant and decided that it behoved me to return, lest
some important movement should take place on the Potomac. As I
could not be with more than one army, I then resolved to follow the
fortunes of McClellan’s great host, which indeed was regarded by
Americans themselves with the greatest anxiety. And so, after a few
days, I set about leaving cards and paying farewell visits to those
who had so kindly entreated me in the City of the Strait.
The learned institutions, the libraries, the machinery of
education, the various literary and scientific associations, and
the admirable seminaries of Quebec, are most creditable to the
community; they would place that city on a level with some of the
most learned of European cities of far greater antiquity; and the
public spirit and intelligence of its citizens have been fully
evinced in the aid and support they have rendered to institutions
designed for the spread of knowledge.
The public buildings have also the stamp of respectable antiquity
upon them; none of them possess any considerable architectural
merits, but several are exceedingly interesting. Constant fires
have proved nearly ruinous to the buildings erected by the original
settlers; and those which have been subsequently built are not
remarkable for beauty--indeed, I may say that the Laval University
is one of the plainest buildings it has ever been my lot to behold.
On all sides it is admitted that the nuns of the Ursuline
Convent have conferred the greatest benefit upon the city by
their unceasing devotion to the task of education. Many people
of respectability--Protestants as well as Catholics--send their
children to be educated by these excellent women, representing
the system inaugurated more than 200 years ago by Madeleine de
Chauvigny, who, moved by grief for the loss of her husband to
devote herself to Heaven, and to the spread of the Christian faith,
sailed forth from France, and, landing at Quebec, established
schools for the Indian girls to learn the faith of the white race,
which was destined to destroy their own.
The Ursuline Convent is a massive building, ugly as most convents
of modern date are, standing amidst the houses of the city. The
day I visited it there were no means of seeing the schools, and I
was obliged to be content with a sight of the chapel instead. On
ringing the bell by the side of a massive iron-bound door, I was
admitted to the front of a _grille_, through which I conveyed my
wishes to the unseen lady who demanded the purport of my visit;
and, after a short delay, the clergyman attached to the service
of the church was ready, and an old Swiss or porteress conducted
me to the entrance of the chapel, which is of large size, of no
pretensions to architectural beauty, and of little interest to me
for anything but the fact that within its walls lie the bones of
Montcalm.
The Ursulines, however, are of opinion that they have got a
collection of paintings of merit, and I was called upon to admire
some extraordinary specimens of art very nearly approaching the
class denominated daubs, which were not recommended even by
antiquity. Although the priest bore a pure Irish patronymic, he had
never been in the British isles, having been educated in France,
where he was born, whence he came out to Canada in the course of
his ministry. He was an agreeable, intelligent, gentlemanly man,
but he had evidently no faith in the pictures, and probably not
much greater in some other remarkable decorations exhibited within
the holy walls. The altar-piece and two or three subjects belonging
probably to the old convent, rescued the collection from entire
condemnation.
On the wall of the chapel, on the left-hand side from the entrance,
there is a marble slab, on which are engraved the following words:
“Honneur à Montcalm! Le destin en lui dérobant la victoire l’a
récompensé par une mort glorieuse!” The graceful words are due to
Lord Aylmer. Montcalm received his death-wound from a ball fired
by the only piece of artillery which we could get up the heights;
but like his great rival and conqueror he was wounded in the fight
by a musket-shot at a comparatively early stage of the battle.
Like Wolfe, too, Montcalm loved literature: “également propre aux
batailles et aux académies, son désir était d’unir aux lauriers de
Mars les palmes de Minerve.”
The following is a translation of the inscription and epitaph
written by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres of Paris
in 1761, and inscribed on a monument which that body had designed
to erect in Quebec, but which never reached that city, the vessel
on which it had been embarked having been lost at sea:
“HERE LIETH
In either hemisphere to live for ever,
LEWIS JOSEPH DE MONTCALM GOZON,
Marquis of St. Véran, Baron of Gabriac,
Commander of the Order of St. Lewis,
Lieutenant-General of the French army;
not less an excellent citizen than soldier,
who knew no desire but that of
TRUE GLORY;
Happy in a natural genius, improved by literature;
Having gone through the several steps of military honours
with an uninterrupted lustre;
skilled in all the arts of war,
the juncture of the times and the crisis of danger;
In Italy, in Bohemia, in Germany,
an indefatigable general:
He so discharged his important trusts,
that he seemed always equal to still greater.
At length, grown bright with perils,
sent to secure the province of Canada,
with a handful of men,
he more than once repulsed the enemy’s forces,
and made himself master of their forts,
replete with troops and ammunition.
Inured to cold, hunger, watching and labours,
unmindful of himself,
he had no sensation but for his soldiers:
An enemy with the fiercest impetuosity;
a victor with the tenderest humanity;
adverse fortune he compensated with valour;
the want of strength with skill and activity;
and, with his counsel and support,
for four years protracted the impending
fate of the colony.
Having, with various artifices,
long baffled a great army,
headed by an expert and intrepid commander,
and a fleet furnished with all warlike stores,
compelled at length to an engagement,
he fell--in the first rank--in the first onset,
warm with those hopes of religion
which he had always cherished;
to the inexpressible loss of his own army,
and not without the regret of the enemy’s,
XIV September, A.D. MDCCLIX.
Of his age, XLVIII.
His weeping countrymen
deposited the remains of their excellent General in a grave
which a fallen bomb in bursting had excavated for him,
recommending them to the generous faith of their enemies.”
Had his counsel been taken by de Vaudreuil, we never could bare
occupied Point Levi, and in all probability the expedition to
Quebec would have failed.
There is something exceedingly touching in the death of the two
generals in the same battle. My guide, however, was more interested
in calling my attention to the ornaments of the altar, and to a
skull, which he assured me was that of Montcalm.
“Through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion’s host that never brook’d control,”
was seen filled with dust, and the priest held in his hand, like
a cricket-ball, the home of the subtle intellect of the man who
raised to such a height the power of France in the western world.
When the old Indian chief told Montcalm--“Tu es petit! mais je
vois dans tes yeux la hauteur du chêne et la vivacité des yeux des
aigles,” how little the politic, gallant Frenchman ever thought his
skull would be kept in a box in a priest’s cupboard, and shown as a
curiosity to strangers from that barbarous Britain.
I cannot say that the priest succeeded in pointing out anything as
interesting among the pictures as even the skull of the Marquis de
Montcalm.
So far as I can ascertain, no Canadian painter has yet been
inspired by the faith and devotion which wrought such miracles and
wonders in mediæval Europe, to concentrate his talents on church
pictures.
There is not much good fellowship between the French Roman
Catholics and their Irish co-religionists; and I was told that few
of the latter ever entered the chapel of the Ursulines, though
they constitute an appreciable proportion of the population. The
Canadians, indeed, retain a good deal of the old French sentiment,
and regard the Irish very much as their ancestors, under St. Ruth,
looked on the poor vassals of the Irish Jacobins. The Irish are,
however, more energetic and restless, and do not lose by comparison
with the unenterprising inhabitants.
The feelings and faith of the French Canadian tend to keep up all
that is French in his nature. Small wonder that it should be so.
But it may be doubted whether he has much sympathy with the Empire,
though he is proud of the glory and renown attained by the parent
stock under the “Great Gaul” who founded it.
In visiting the beautiful and well-ordered Library of the Houses
of Parliament, the state of which does honour to the excellent
curator, I observed several very handsome volumes of the most
costly works marked with the French imperial cipher. They had, it
appeared, been presented to the Canadian Parliament by the Emperor
Louis Napoleon, and they were pointed out to me with much pride and
pleasure; but I looked in vain for any such outward and visible
sign of favour and policy on the part of the reigning House in
England. The conduct of France towards Canada in former times, if
not always just to the settlers, was indeed exceedingly liberal
to the landed interest; on one occasion some sixteen country
gentlemen were raised to the French peerage. The most a Canadian
can hope for now is a barren baronetcy or the honours of the Bath.
By conferring on our colonies, dependencies, and provinces very
liberal democratic forms of government institutions, and at the
same time refusing to give the counterpoise which an extension of
the aristocratic system to them would bestow, we hasten the coming
of the day when separation becomes inevitable. When separation
takes place, the difference of institutions begets opposition of
views and of policy, distrust, and, finally, collision.
One of my New York acquaintances, who professed to be somewhat of
a philosopher, said, one day, he was quite sure the colonies never
would have revolted, no matter how high tea was taxed, if the
king had made a few of the leading Americans peers of the realm.
The dream of an Imperial Senate with representatives from all the
portions of the wide-spread territories of Great Britain may excite
the imagination, but it is not likely to be ever realised. The
honours which have been conferred on such men as Sir Etienne Taché
and Sir Narcisse Belleau, are highly prized, and a more liberal
bestowal of the cheap defence of nations would do much to gratify
the reasonable ambition of the Canadians.
That there should be some--and not a little--jealousy of foreign
interference and usurpation of places, profits, and honours, by
the English families, is not unnatural. I am not persuaded that it
was right to hand over the whole direction of the volunteer and
militia organisation to British officers, who are by the many often
identified with the last noisy ensign who has been playing pranks
in the Rue de Montagne. The remembrances of the old rebellion have
not altogether died out, but it appeared to me that the Canadians
are a mild, tractable race, fond of justice, a little too fond of
law, and quite content to live under any rule which secured them
equal rights, and gave them facility for moderate litigation and
religious exercises.
While I was in Quebec some foolish young men stormed a house under
a misapprehension as to its character. The same thing might have
happened in Great Britain; it would have excited no feeling--the
perpetrators might have compounded for their folly, or have
suffered the penalty. Here the matter was hushed up, and some of
the Canadians were vexed and angry. Provincials must necessarily
be jealous of the smallest appearance of disrespect or show of
distinctive justice between the two races.
There are very few persons in England acquainted with the many
ancient and glorious memories which endear Quebec to the French
Canadians. Jacques Cartier is to them a greater discoverer and
navigator than Captain Cook is to us, and a long list of names
thoroughly French illustrate the early history of the city. De
Frontenac, Le Chevalier de Levi, Dambourges and others are not
known to those who are well acquainted with Wolfe and Montcalm.
Quebec, though doubtless the oldest city existing on the continent,
is in a very different condition from that in which it was for many
a year after it was founded by Champlain, more than two centuries
and a half ago. It is quite delightful, after a sojourn in the
United States, to ramble through the tortuous streets, lined by
tall narrow-windowed houses with irregular gables, even though an
air of something like decay has settled upon the place. There is
no trace in Quebec of the feverish activity of American cities--no
great hotels nor eager multitudes thronging the pavements; but in
summer the quays present a most animated appearance, for the noble
waters of the St. Lawrence are then laden with stately ships,
and traffic is carried on extensively in the exchange of the
exhaustless forest-produce of the back country for the manufactures
of Europe.
The Indian squaws and their people have well-nigh vanished from
the scene, and it would almost seem as though they were unfit
to learn the doctrines of Christianity--it is certain they had
not qualities to permit of their flourishing in the midst of
Christians. Other coloured races brought in contact with the white
man have saved themselves from extermination by service; but the
individual Indian is feudatory to no man--he says “Ich Dien” to
no created being. The result is, that, slowly and surely, he is
driven further and further out into the waste, or is caught up in
the waters of civilisation, and held, like the fly in amber, as
a curious instance of the incompatibility of one substance with
the surrounding particles of another. He will never again play a
part in any contest which may take place between the British and
Americans; notwithstanding the efforts made by the Confederates to
use the Southern Indians in the present war, no adequate results
have been obtained for the trouble.
In the War of Independence the Indians served on both sides, but
the odium of employing them in the first instance against the
colonists must undoubtedly rest on the British ministry of the day.
Although the distance from Montreal to Quebec, taking the course of
the river, is but 180 miles, there is considerable difference in
climate. The scenery around the capital of the Lower Province, and
the present seat of Government, is more elevated and picturesque;
but the quality of the soil is not so favourable to agriculture.
The habitant is a very different being from the Scotch or English
farmer; he regards with aversion agricultural implements of the new
school, and woos the earth to yield its fruits with the most simple
appliances; he is stubborn in his attachment to antique customs,
and if he has most of the virtues, he assuredly has some of the
faults of a purely rural agricultural population.
The events of the rebellion induced us, perhaps, to underrate the
military capacity of the French Canadians, but they may point with
pride to the deeds of their ancestors in defence of their soil
against American invasion, and they would, no doubt, maintain in
the field the reputation of the race from which they spring. The
great defect of the native is, perhaps, his want of enterprise. He
rarely emigrates to new scenes of labour, and even the inhabitant
of the town shrinks from an encounter with the active American or
Anglo-Saxon. Thus it is, at the present moment, that nearly all
the agricultural and industrial enterprises of Lower Canada have
originated with or been developed by persons of a different stock.
Want of capital is the great evil which afflicts the inhabitants
of both Canadas, and even the oil-wells and gold mines have, to a
large extent, fallen into the hands of the solid men of Boston, and
of the hard men of New England; but the Canadians would behave in
the face of an enemy with the spirit, courage, and conduct which
they have exhibited on their own limited battle-fields.
It would be of little value, within the limits of this volume,
to attempt a recapitulation of the principal events of Canadian
history, either in connection with its early founders or with the
English government; but surely the materials are not wanting for an
interesting record of the struggles of the enterprising Europeans
who contended so fiercely with barbarous races and an inclement
clime to found what already promises to be a great nation. The
savage has died out, or he has been civilised into a degraded
creature for whom no place seems left at the great table of nature,
and the civilised man his successor has learned to control and
mollify the influences of climate, and to extort from the soil
fruits in abundance. But Canada is by no means as cold as it has
been painted, or rather, it would be more proper to say, the cold
there is not so intolerable as we think. It would astonish many
people in this country to learn that the Northern States of America
suffer more from cold than does the vast frontier region of Canada
which borders on the Lakes. In Iowa, for instance, the cold is more
intense than at Montreal. Grapes and peaches ripen on the Canadian
shores of the great lakes; plums, melons, tomatoes, and apples
thrive and grow to perfection in the provinces. As cultivation
advances the rigour of winter is appreciably diminished, although
the farmers, with that customary want of submission to the will of
Providence which characterises all people who live in dependence on
the seasons, complain that the frost is not as severe as it was in
the good old times, and that they are deprived of the advantages of
long-enduring snow and rigid winters.
What glorious visions of shooting now and of fishing in spring had
opened before me, if the Federal army would only stay quiet! Not,
indeed, that there is much sport for the rifle or fowling-piece now
left in this part of Canada in winter, except moose, for which I
did not care much, but that such strange scenes could be visited
and described. In open weather there is a little shooting of
quails, partridges, and ground game; before winter sets in there
is plenty of wild ducks, but it is in fishing that the province
is most tempting. The Godbout, uncertain as it is, would tempt
any fisherman to a pilgrimage--a river in which one man, Captain
Strachan, played and landed forty-two salmon and grilse in two
half-days. But then the black-flies and musquitoes! Well, of this
more hereafter. Though little that more must be, as long as there
is such a guide-book as that of Dr. Adamson--the charming, amiable,
and accomplished gentleman, in whom I was rejoiced to recognise the
type of _le vrai gentilhomme irlandais_; who knows every thing that
ever was done or thought by Canadian salmon, and is ever willing
to impart his knowledge.
To a young officer fresh from a Mediterranean or home
station--unless he were at Aldershot or the Curragh,
perhaps--Quebec must appear rather dull. He has none of the
excellent sporting for great and small game which India affords.
Society presents itself under a new aspect. A people speaking a
different language are not his servants, nor his kith and kin,
and yet he must protect and fight for them. He has no sympathy
with a nationality which is prouder of Montcalm than of Wolfe,
and which claims, nevertheless, the lions and the harp as “_notre
drapeau_.” So if he be unwise and unreasonable, he takes dislikes
and ascribes every inconvenience he endures, not to the policy of
the mother-country he serves, but to the people of the province.
I was present one evening at a ball given by one of the ministers,
a French Canadian, at which there was a large assemblage of all
the best people in the city, and I was struck by the absence of
young officers, although many of higher rank were present. A lady,
to whom I mentioned the circumstance, said, “Oh! they rarely come
among us, so we have left off asking them. If they do come, they
stand with their backs against the wall criticising our style
and our dresses, and never offer to dance till supper is over,
when they vanish.” This is by no means universally applicable to
all societies or regiments, but it is no doubt the truth in some
instances.
One must regret that the English language was not introduced into
the law courts and legislature. Experience proves that there are
no instruments so powerful in sustaining the existence of a
nationality, as the tongue and pen. The Canadians of to-day affect
to be French, more because they speak a French at which Paris
laughs, than from any real sympathy founded on mutual interests or
present history between France and Canada. I was assured by one
earnest Canadian, that France had never forgiven the Bourbons for
the fault of Louis XV., in ceding Canada to Great Britain. He had
more reason probably for asserting that, but for the establishment
of our supremacy in 1765, the rebellion of the thirteen colonies of
North America would not have occurred when it did. But the conquest
by Wolfe, confirmed by treaty, put an end to most cruel and
barbarous massacres, outrages, and petty border wars, between the
French and English settlers and their auxiliary tribes of Indians,
and if it had been attended or followed by any wise and liberal
acts of government, must have produced very great results on the
tone and temper of the Canadian mind.
It would have been wonderful indeed, if, a century ago, when our
statute book was written in blood, when our fellow-subjects at home
were under the ban of religious disability, and beaten to the earth
beneath the weight of penal enactments, any traces of wisdom had
been exhibited in the management of a distant dependency. Keeping
alive the feelings of a distinct nationality by the powerful
machinery of different national laws and customs, the conquerors
ruled the province by military law for more than ten long years;
but the tempest which agitated the American colonies was already
felt in the air. The ministry, anxious only to drain money from
their distant dependencies, were engaged in devising taxes, whilst
the colonists prepared to vindicate, by force of arms, their
great principle, that representation was the basis of taxation.
The two Acts of 1774 were passed to enable the government to raise
revenues for the maintenance of the local government, and for the
appointment of a council of government, nominated by the Crown. By
the capitulation of Quebec, the free exercise of their religion was
accorded to the Canadians. By the Act of 1774, the Roman Catholic
Church was recognised as established, and the “Coutume de Paris”
accepted as the foundation of civil and equity administration.
Is it not strange that Great Britain should have accorded such
concessions to Roman Catholics and colonists, when the penal system
was most rigorously enforced in Ireland? But is it not stranger
still, that the people of the American colonies, who were about to
set themselves up as the children and the champions of freedom of
faith and conscience, should have taken bitter umbrage at those
very concessions! The Americans of the North bore an exceeding
animosity to the French Canadians. They remonstrated in fierce,
intolerant, and injurious language with the people of Great
Britain, for the cession of these privileges to the Canadians, and
the Continental Congress did not hesitate to say that they thought
“Parliament was not authorised by the constitution to establish a
religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets.”
In a strain of sublime impudence, considering the work they were
ready for, the same Congress also expressed their astonishment that
Parliament should have consented to permit in Canada, “a religion
that has deluged your island with blood, and dispersed impiety,
_bigotry_, persecution, murder, and _rebellion_ through the world.”
It may be worth while to notice the fact that the first notion of
united action on the part of the British North American colonies
may have been developed by the British government, and that the
idea of independence was suggested by the very recommendations to
self-defence which came from the mother country. The Convention of
Delegates at Albany in 1754, which met in consequence of the advice
tendered by the Home Government, adopted a federal system, which
contained, in effect, the germ of the United States. Though this
and similar propositions were not entertained, the growth of such
an idea must have been rapid indeed. In the British Colonial system
there was the breath of life--a little fanning, and the whole
body was alive and active. In the Canadian system there was only
the animating spirit of dependency on France, and on a system in
France, which was perishing before the sneers of the new philosophy.
The French Canadians of the present day, in accusing the British
government of a hundred years ago of want of liberality and
foresight in the administration of their newly acquired territory,
are wilfully blind to the sort of government which they received
from the Bourbons. The dominion of a foreign race, however, is
always galling, be it covered ever so thickly with velvet, and all
its acts are regarded with suspicion and dislike. The concessions
and liberality of the British government which drew forth such
indignant protests from the bigoted New Englanders, was ascribed
to fears of Canadian revolt, or to a selfish desire to conciliate
the good-will of subjects who might become formidable enemies. If
England lost the American colonies because she refused to accept
a principle which, however sound and just, was certainly new
and not accepted as of universal application, she needed not to
apprehend the recurrence of a separation, forcible or peaceable,
of Canada on any such grounds. It is impossible for a country
to be held by a more slender cord; and in all but the actual
exercise of the sovereign style, title, and attributes, Canada
is free and independent. If the sentiment or the nationality of
the Lower Canadians ever induces them to seek the protection or
rule of any European State, they will no doubt at once come into
collision with Upper Canada and the United States, and we can but
pity their infatuation. If Upper Canada thinks to better herself
by separation, and union with the Western States, Great Britain
assuredly will never hold her by force. It would be useless to
discuss the rights and obligations of a sovereignty and its
nominal dependency in relation to mutual succour in time of war;
but it seems only fair that the great permanent works necessary
for strategical purposes, and as _points d’appui_ for the forces
of the protecting military power, should be made and repaired
and garrisoned at the imperial expense, whilst on the mass of
the population must be placed the task of rising to defend their
country from invasion, assisted by such imperial troops as can be
spared from the occupation of the fixed points of defence. The
Canadians must not content themselves with the empty assertion that
if their country should be invaded Great Britain alone is attacked.
Let them emulate the Old England colonies, and the conduct of their
ancestors in 1812. The United States bear them no good-will; and
as the only power from which Canada has anything to fear, the
Americans would be just as likely to make war against the Province
as against the Empire, and trust to their own impregnability,
except at sea, as a guarantee against any dangerous consequences.
The future is beyond our ken. There are prophets who long ago
predicted the amalgamation of the Upper Province with the West, and
who now find greater hope for the realisation of their soothsayings
in the approaching dissolution of the Federal States. Others there
are who see at no distant time the re-establishment of a French
dependency on the northern portion of the Anglo-Saxon States,
already hemmed in on the slave border by the shadowy outlines of an
empire under French protection. When we see what has taken place on
that continent within the last hundred years, it is not to be said
that combinations and occurrences much more wonderful will not come
to pass before the present century closes. The policy of a State,
as the duty of an individual, is to do what is right and leave the
future to work out its destiny.