II.-Social and Economic Conditions of the British Provinces after the Canadian Rebellions, 1838-1840.

By SIR JOHN BOURINOT, K.C.M.G., LL.D., D.C.L., Lit.D., (Laval).

(Read May 30, 1900.)

In 1838 the population of the five provinces of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, was estimated at about one million four hundred thousand persons. In Upper Canada, with the exception of a very few people of German or Dutch descent, and a number of French Canadians opposite Detroit and in the Ottawa Valley, there was a large British population of at least four hundred thousand souls. The population of Lower Canada had increased six times since 1791, and was estimated at six hundred thousand, of whom hardly one quarter were of British origin, living chiefly in Montreal, the townships, and Quebec. Nova Scotia had nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom probably sixteen thousand were French Acadians, resident in Cape Breton and in western Nova Scotia. In New Brunswick there were at least one hundred and fifty thousand people, of whom some fifteen thousand were descendants of the original inhabitants of Acadie. The island of Prince Edward had thirty thousand people, of whom the French Acadians made up nearly one-sixth. The total trade of the country amounted to about, in round figures, five millions of pounds sterling in imports, and generally less in exports. The imports were chiefly manufactures from Great Britain, and the exports were lumber, wheat and fish. Those were days when colonial trade was stimulated by differential duties in favour of colonial products, and the building of vessels was encouraged by the old navigation laws which shut out foreign commerce from the St. Lawrence and Atlantic ports, and kept the carrying trade between Great Britain and the colonies in the hands of British and colonial merchants, by means of British registered ships. While colonials could not trade directly with foreign ports, they were given a monopoly for their timber, fish and provisions in the profitable markets of the British West Indies.

Since the beginning of the century there had been a large immigration into the provinces except during the war of 1812. The large Scotch population which now exercises such large influence in Nova Scotia owes its origin chiefly to the immigration which came from the isles and northern parts of Scotland in 1801, and had brought in upwards of thirty

thousand souls by 1825, when the exodus from the Highlands practically ceased. A number of Scotch immigrants were also brought into Prince Edward by Lord Selkirk, whose name is intimately connected with the first settlement of the Red River Valley in the Northwest, so long a preserve for fur-traders. Among the Loyalists of 1783-84 there was a considerable number of Scotch birth, and their number in Glengarry was augmented in 1804 by a disbanded regiment, the Glengarry Fencibles, induced to immigrate by their chaplain, Alexander Macdonell, afterwards the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Upper Canada. At the close of the wars with Napoleon and the United States the tide of immigration gathered strength. A large number of discharged soldiers. and officers, among whom were many Scotch, found their way to Upper Canada and established what were long known as the military settlements, notably in the Perth and London districts. Representatives of the same nationality also made homes for themselves in the Eastern Townships, where emigrants from the adjoining states had prevailed. Until 1837, when immigration almost ceased, a considerable number of Scotch came out from year to year, and settled chiefly in Upper Canada where the inducements for agriculture were greater than in the other provinces. The Chartist and Radical risings in Great Britain disturbed trade most injuriously and forced many people to seek employment in the new world. Lanark County was in this way largely settled by Glasgow and Paisley weavers.

The Irish immigration was small until about 1823, when it commenced to be large as a consequence of great depression in Ireland where the increasing use of machinery temporarily disturbed the conditions of labour. Many of these people were Roman Catholics, but in 1829 Ulster Protestants in considerable numbers found their way to Upper Canada rather than remain in Ireland where Catholic Emancipation had been carried. In the nine years preceding 1837, two hundred and sixtythree thousand and eighty-nine British and Irish immigrants arrived at Quebec, and in one year alone there were over fifty thousand. Of this number, the Irish formed a very considerable proportion. From 1830 until 1832 inclusive, fifty thousand English, Scotch and Irish immigrants increased the population of Upper Canada. Owing to the political troubles in Canada, immigration fell to four thousand nine hundred and ninety-two persons in 1838.

The character of this immigration varied considerably, but on the whole the thrifty and industrious formed a fair proportion. In 1838 they must have been of a superior class, since they deposited three hundred thousand sovereigns or nearly a million and a half of dollars in the Upper Canadian banks. Military men, however, as a rule did not

make the best farmers, as was graphically shown in Mrs. Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush." The Irish Catholics were in the majority of cases from the destitute classes, but they succeeded well eventually wherever they settled on the waste lands of Upper Canada, but a considerable number always chose the cities and towns. The sufferings of immigrants during the Atlantic voyage in ill-equipped, filthy, crowded ships, were terrible in days when governments took no precautions for the health and comfort of this class against the greed of shipowners. Disease ever claimed its victims in these pest ships, and in 1832 cholera was brought in this way into Canada, where many thousands of persons from Quebec to Sandwich, fell victims to this dread pestilence.

An important event in the history of the settlement of the upper province was the establishment in 1826 of the Canada Land Company, under an imperial charter. The first secretary was John Galt, a famous littérateur, who founded the "royal city" of Guelph, in honour of the reigning dynasty, and whose own name is perpetuated in a prosperous and beautiful town of the fine western district where the company had purchased from the government great blocks of land. Another eminent man was the clever, eccentric Dr. Dunlop,-the founder of Goderichwho is immortalised in Noctes Ambrosiana and who contributed interesting sketches of Canadian life to Blackwood's and Fraser's Magazines. Although the Canada Company, which still has an office in Toronto, was a factor in the settlement of the province, its possession of large tracts of the best land-some of which, like the Huron block, were locked up for years was among the grievances against the government, who lent itself too readily to the schemes of speculators.

An important influence in the early settlement of Upper Canada was exercised by one Colonel Talbot, who had been secretary to Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, and had received large grants of land on the western peninsula between Erie and Ontario. He was the founder of the County of Elgin, and at least two hundred and fifty thousand people now live in the twenty-eight townships of what was once called the "Talbot Settlement." Mrs. Anna Jameson, the wife of a vice-chancellor of Upper Canada, describes in her "Winter Studies and Summer Rambles," written in 1838, the home of this great proprietor-a Talbot of Malahide, one of the oldest families in the parent state. The Chateau -as she calls it, perhaps sarcastically-was a "long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side." Here she found suspended "among sundry implements of husbandry, one of those ferocious animals of the feline kind, called here the cat-a-mountain, and by some the American tiger, or panther which it more resembles." In the hall" sacks of wheat and piles of sheepskins lay

heaped in primitive fashion." The walls of the living room were formed of naked logs. In front of a capacious chimney stood a long wooden table, flanked with two wooden chairs cut from the forest close by. No fauteuil, spring-cushioned, extended its comfortable arms, for the owner held all such luxuries in contempt. The interior of the house contained "several comfortable lodging rooms and one really handsome, the dining room." There was a large kitchen with a tremendously hospitable chimney, and underground were the cellars for storing wine, milk, and provisions. "Around the house stood a vast variety of outbuildings, of all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the least regard to order or symmetry." Behind the house lay "an open tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where large flocks of sheep and cattle were feeding the whole inclosed by a beautiful and luxuriant woods, through which ran a little river." Near the chateau was an orchard ground of the common European fruits in abundance, and a garden abounding in roses of different kinds. This owner of a lovely estate had neither wife nor children to cheer him in this picturesque home of the West, but he was not without abundant company. Mrs. Jameson was used "to find groups of strange figures around the door, ragged, black-bearded, gaunt, travel-worn, and toil-worn emigrants, Irish, Scotch and American who had come to offer themselves as settlers. ....Curious and characteristic, and dramatic beyond description were the scenes which used to take place between the grand bashaw of the wilderness and his hungry, importunate clients and petitioners." Such homes as Colonel Talbot's were common enough in the country. Some of the higher class of immigrants, however, made efforts to surround themselves with some of the luxuries of the old world. Mrs. Jameson tells us of an old admiral, who had settled in the London district-now the most prosperous agricultural part of Ontario-and had the best of society in his neighbourhood; "several gentlemen of family, superior education, and large capital (among them the brother of an English and the son of an Irish peer, a colonel and major in the army) whose estates were in a flourishing state." The Admiral's residence resembled an "African village, a sort of Timbuctoo," from the outside, and "a man-of-war's cabin" in the inside. He had begun by erecting a log house, while the woods were clearing, and added from time to time a number of others of all shapes and sizes, full of a seaman's contrivances-odd galleries, passages, porticos, corridors, saloons, cabins, and cupboards." The drawing-room, which occupied an entire building, was "really a noble room. with a chimney in which they piled twenty oak logs at once." The Admiral's sister, an accomplished woman, had "recently brought from

Europe, tazzi, marbles, sculpture in lava or alabaster, miniature copies of the eternal Sibyl and Cenci, Raphael's Vatican" such things "as are seldom found so far inland, but cosa altra piu cara or at least piu rare."

Such examples of European tastes and habits were, however, few in number and contrasted strangely with the common characteristics of the Canadian settlements, the humble log huts of the poor immigrant, struggling with axe and hoe amid the stumps to make a home for his family. Year by year the sunlight was let into the dense forests, and fertile meadows soon stretched far and wide in the once untrodden wilderness. Despite all the difficulties of a pioneer's life, industry reaped its adequate rewards in the fruitful lands of the west. Bread was easily raised in abundance and animals of all kinds thrived. In the winter season, when there was relief from the engrossing demands of summer toil, and the snow covered, frozen soil gave opportunities for social intercourse, the people of the rural districts found amusement in "husking" parties, barn raisings, threshing bees, and other gatherings which combined business and gaiety. Unhappily the great bane of the province was the inordinate use of liquor. Wretched inns, generally kept by a greedy, illiterate class of Americans, were too common in the villages and at the cross-roads. "The erection of a church or chapel," says Mrs. Jameson, "generally preceded that of a school-house in Upper Canada, but the mill and the tavern invariably preceded both." The accommodation for travellers was very inferior outside of the large towns where some half-pay officer, or enterprising settler-generally Scotch-condescended to add to their income by taking in guests. When wheat, however, was high, the temporary inn was closed, and the traveller had to go to the general inn-generally in the sparsely settled districts-"a rude log hut, with one window and one room, answering all purposes, a lodging or sleeping place, divided off at one end by a few planks, outside a shed of bark and boughs for the horses, and a hollow trunk of a tree disposed as a trough." At one of the highland settlements Mrs. Jameson rested at "Campbell's Inn," which consisted of a log hut and a cattle shed. A long pole stuck into the decayed stump of a tree in front of the hut, served as the sign." With some difficulty the traveller "procured some milk and Indian corn-cakes. The family despite their wretched appearance, might be considered prosperous, as they had a property of two hundred acres of excellent land, of which sixty acres were cleared and in cultivation, five cows and fifty sheep." These people had come out destitute, and had won what was to them comfort in sixteen years, and their condition was that of thousands from Cape Breton to Sandwich. Between the humble emigrants, and the agricultural nobles Sec. II., 1900. 3.

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