In sending forth these gleanings from the later compositions of my few
leisure hours, I take the opportunity of thanking most sincerely those
many friends who have so generously subscribed for the work. Not only
has their kind appreciation caused me to realize that I am no longer a
stranger in a strange land, but also, that I possess the whole-souled
sympathy of not a few, in this the country of my adoption.
Many are the tender memories which unite me to the olden land: a land
for ever hallowed as the quiet resting-place of the lovèd dead, and
the once happy home of a love-encircled childhood. Still, I cannot but
deplore the many evils existing therein; more especially that evil of a
system which places the greater number at the mercy of the fewer--the
debasing system of extensive landlordism; a system which may have
suited in those former periods when kingdoms and positions were mainly
dependent upon force of arms, but for which there can be no plausible
apology in this progressive, and pretentiously humanizing age; and if
any words of mine shall induce the tyrant-crushed and woe-oppressed of
other climes to raise their eyes towards the setting sun, and to seek a
home in this Canada,--this God-appointed haven, these words shall not
have been penned in vain.
I cherish the utmost faith in the future of Canada--faith which leads
me to look beyond my little day and view her, with ample resources
still developing, with invitations of welcome still extended, a
full-grown nation of intelligent, enterprising and generous-souled
people, more glorious by far than the world-renowned empires of the
past; a nation unfettered from bigotry of sect, envy of position,
and clannishness of clime; a nation whose belief is in the eternal
fatherhood of God, and the universal brotherhood of humanity; a nation
whose every act of every day life is the pure and lofty exponent of a
Christly Christianity, and in whose healthy moral atmosphere vice with
its attendant train of evils cannot exist; a nation upon which, over
all its boundless pasture lands and by its many sounding shores, the
sun of Freedom shines, and the honest, earnest worshipper bendeth never
a humble knee save to fair Freedom's God.