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THERESE STREET, AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS. 1841. 1 i il ADVERTISEMENT. The following Essay was commenced with a view to its ap- pearing in the columns of a newspaper, but it has gradually assumed a character, which induces the writer to submit it in a more independent and less ephemeral form to the intelligent guides of pubhc opinion. To disloyal hearts he knows that he is administering gall and wormwood ; his only aim has been to kindle every loyalist into brighter loyalty, and arm him with a ready proof of even the most glowing faith that can be in him. ARARAT. July, 1841. CUBBEER BURR, OH, THE THEE OF MANY TRUNKS " F'.rditf'J tT the riv^ra of water, — his leaf also shall nol T-ithov " Ppalna T. PART I. BRITISH EMPIRE. POSITION AND EXTENT—STABILITY— POWER— SPIRIT— DESTINY. j|0 say nothing of the earth-girding isles, which have been consecrated by right Df discovery to enrich in succession the daily brightening and expanding diadem of Eng- land, or of the many-armed ocean, which, as if in mockery of the Mediterranean of Imperial Rome, is fast becoming the mare internum of a people toto divisos orbe, the regions, where already "the meteor flag" receives in fear or in love the homage of the nations, more than realize in extent and position all thai the conquerors or the poets of antiquity ever dreamed of universal em- pire. Map in hand, prosecute the patriotic survey. With one semi-barbarous exception, Bri- tish America is the largest continuous tract in the world, that acknowledges one and the same sovereignty. Extending eighty-eight degrees in longitude, and in latitude from the forty-third degree to the arctic ocean, it sur- passes in magnitude every past dominion of the eastern hemisphere from Semiramis to Tamerlane, from Trajan to Napoleon. — Projecting into the Atlantic on the one side, and on the other into the Pacific, it ha:i easier B ♦ access than any power on this continent to the respective marts, whether opened or opening, of Europe and Asia ; while by means of the Columbia on the west, and oi the St. Lawrence with its parent seas on the east, it virtually narrows the continent as much in comparison as it actually nar- row? the ocean. — Enjoying both on the west and on the east unrivalled facilities for build- ing and victualling ships, it can avail itself to any extent of its geographical advantages ; while skirting on either side all the most valuable fisheries in the world, it is destined to engross fat more than its share ol that branch of tn. .;. which, as it require, seamen for producers at; well as for carriers, is preg- nant with the surest elements of maritime greatness. — Bringing England into contact with the three next greatest powers on the globe, it invests her with a cheap influence over them, whether for peaceful rivalry or for deadly strife. To descend to particulars, it may soon divide with Russia the supply of Northern China and appropriate a large portion of the foreign trade of Japan ; it renders France merely lenant at will ol St. Pierre and Miquek>n> the fragments of » CUBBEEll BURU. onro vast cmj)ire ; it liarign closely and heavily on the longest frontier of the United States, and thus lays bare alike to the skill of English artisans and to the prowess of English soldiers, the most crowded thorouirh- farcs of the internal commerce snd the in- ternal colonisation of the Americans, while from the strong and capacious harbours of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, it rakes the sea-board of the ^reat republic, and Hanks that highway of nations, the gulf-stream. St. John's and Halifax soon find partners in the patriotic task. The rock-girt Ber- mudas and the clustering Bahamas complete the blockade of the sea-board, and doom the gulf-stream, in all its peopled length, to run the gauntlet under the booming thunder of England. But the Bahamas share in a still more dazzling enterprise. From Florida to Gui- ana, the West Indies carry at their girdle the keys of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea; separate from the rest of the world the adjacent coasts of the United States, Texas, Mexico, Guatemala and Columbia, and place the resistless grasp of England on all the remain- ing possessions in the new world, of all the colonial States in the old. But the crown- ing glory of the West Indies is yet to come. The happy dream in which Columbus died, that the west is the true path to the east, is soon to be realised; and its realisation will draw within the range of the bright crescent of the Antilles the traffic of half the globe. Nor is this arc without its centre. Far towards the setting sun, in the rear of the embosomed waters rise the leafy towers of Honduras, which wait only the harmony of the axe and the mallet to lock themselves into wooden walls for our empire. To return to the far-darting bow, the triple-peaked isle spreads iier toils for the rich freights, with which the virgin soil of a still untrodden world will one day stud the tide-stemming Oronoko. Linked by one hand with Trinidad in the dominion of the Oronoko, Guiana wielo.-s in the other the sceptre of the Amazon, and brings England nearer to the capital ol Brazil, than Calais is to Toulon, or New Orleans to New York. With only an apparent interval of empire,, tlu; Falkland Isles stand ready to bend the next mighty messenger of the Andes to the puq)oses of England, to complete the coii- quest of the Pacific, and, not only to hold in check the Plate Provinces, bui to riot in the now wooing wealth of the once sealed world from Chiloe to California. '' On, on the vessel flies" o'er the divid- ing waste ; and the first object in the old world, as the last in the new, that blesses our vision, is the onmipresent banner of our countr}'. Frowning o'er three worlds of waters, the Stormy Cape must vest in any civilised pos- sessor a potential monopoly of their recipro- cal commerce, while to England, in particu- lar, it is politically invaluable as the hinge of her Australasian and Indian Empires. Occxipying a subordinate, but still import- ant, position in the same glorious path, the Isle of France broods also over her own special part in the great drama of British Supremacy, the sweeping of the tri-color from its only resting place between the west and the east, the Isle of Bourbon. But in the magnitude and variety of her dominion, England becomes her own rival. Commanding that ancient channel of orient- al traffic, which Portuguese skill and en- terprise consigned to the idle winds, Aden, besides overawing Egypt and the Holy Cities, enables England, with more daring enterprise and more profound skill, partially to reverse the doom of centuries, and again to bring the Red Sea into successful compe- tition with the Indian Ocean. Of the Red Sea's ancient competitor, too, England holds the destiny in her hands. — Aden, the Indus and Bondiay render the Arabian Sea an English lake, the Persian of pe; Sp im qu Mi Be an «pi an PARI 1. — BRITISH EMPIRE. ^ 1 in the ielii.^ in on, and pital ol or New empire,, icnil tlie es to the ihe coii- hold in lot in the led workl he divid- (1 the old at blesses ner of our vatcr?, the ilised pos- iir recipro- in particu- le hinge of pi res. itill import- is path, the r her own of British he tri-color en the west riety of her ■ own rival, el of orient- fill and en- inds, Aden, 1 the Holy more daring till, partially !S, and again ssful compe- upetitor, too, lier hands. — y render the !, the Persian Gulf an English estuary, and the Euphrates and the Tigris English streams, and drag within the vortex of our electric energy the once great, and still vast, empires of Persia ami Turkey. To return to ihe salient points, summa JuHligia^ of India, below Bombay languidly reposes Portuguese Goa, the venerable mo- tlier of Christian rule in the gorgeous east. A pledge of friendship in the hands of her present possessor, her capture, in the event of war, must incurably wound the pride of an ancient monarchy, which has large claims on ihe gratitude of the merchant Princes of India ; while, as the independent wreck of a congenial empire, she proclaims with peculiar force lessons of wisdom, jus- tice and moderation to those who now gather where she planted, drink where she dug, and reap where she sowed. Tracked by the breath of its spices, the lofty Paradise of Ceylon links two fast and far diverging tshores, and appends to each the rare asylum of a harbour from alternate monsoons. — Within the sandy surf of the Coromandel Coast, French Pendicherry, a centre shorn of radius and periphery, echoes in the east the wail of St. Pierre and Miquelon in the west, that the flag, which once pointed before every breeze to the paramount do- minion of France, now droops in vassalage to the overshadowing mastery of England. Far in the depths of the Bay of Bengal, our countiy has created a metropolis of palaces, where two ages ago her captive representa- tives were tauntingly denied room to lie down and die, and that, too, by the slaves of one, whose imperial master is now the pensioner of an association of our merchants. Spurning, as unworthy of her destiny, the immemorial boundaries of Hindostan, this queen of the east crosses the Indus to quell Mahommedan pride on the threshold of the Bokhara, and leaves behind her the Ganges and the Himmalayas to rock with earth- tjuake tread the pagan thrones of Ava, Lassa and Peking. —Connected with Calcutta and Assam by a long line of coast, Rangoon bridles in an opposite quarter the rude power of Burman, secures to England the last of the great frivers of Southern Asia, and completes, with her teak-built navies, the sovereignty of the seas from the Isthmus of Suez to the Peninsula 'of Malacca. At the extremity of that golden Chersonese, which ever has been and ever must be the grand pivot of the internal commerce of the east, Malacca, Pulo-Penang and Sincapore reap for England the fruits of this the ricliest of nature's monopolies ; while the borderins Sumatra terminates a dependency of our country, which comprehends in its breadth the valleys of the Indus and the Burram- pooter, and overleaps in its length the Him- malayas and the Equator. — But the van- quished have become the victors. Roljiri" back, for the first time in the history of mankind, the flood of conquest against every invader, they have in Egy[)t reversed the victories of Sesostris, in the Gulf of Ormiis dimmed the glories of Nudir Shah, in Ghizni broken the sceptre of Mahmoud, and in China inflicted retribution on the Tartars. Under the tutelage of England, India, erst the fluttering and bleeding quarry of every marauder, has emerged the eagle of oriental skies, sweeping them with an avenger's force from circumference to circumference, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, from Barbary to Japan. Beyond the "incense urns" of the Dutch Archipelago, thus with Portuguese Macao and the Spanish Philippines doubly match- ed, lies in two zones the giant form of Australia, destined to present a new phasis of human nature by engrafting the refine- ments of civilisation on the simplicity of pastoral life. Even at the mouth of the Indus, the greatest hero of ancient or modern times complained that he iiad no more woilds to conquc.-; but England with holier purpose and loftier resolution, after penetrating twice as far to the ea«t of the Indus as G'lacedun fUBUKEK BUIin. i- is to tlie west, and conquering two more worlds, has paused not in her career of glory, till, unable to advance without re- treating, she has seen her reversed stand- ard, which natui ■ ; lie has ever reversed, flout the nadir of her capital. As the south pole of commerce and civilisation, soon will New Zealand gather into her lap the rich tribute of the coral galaxies of the Pa- cific, diffusing in return the far richer bles- sings of knowledge, industry and freedom. Having now reached a point, when Alexander's ambition might, in truth, have murmured at the niggardliness of nature, vve wend a weary way of ten thousand miles to the lonely halt of the homeward pilgrims of our eastern possessions. The late prison of the vanquished emperor of the west, in whose glorv, as the pedestal of that of his unconquered conqueror, England is more deeply interested than France, and in whose overthrow, as the only guarantee of conti- nental independence, England has become the second founder of every monarchy in Europe, — the late prison, we say, of this all but universal despot, St. Helena, stands the everlasting symbol of the long and well tested supremacy of our. country. Nor was the solitary rock an unworthy instrument of retribution. Smaller in proportion to Na- poleon's empire than his grave to itself, and separated from the nearest abode of man by a wilderness of water, in which that empire at the zenith of its fame might Itave floated and found no shore, it inflicted a sublimely appropriate punishment on that ambition, which the crash of thrones, the prostration of sovereigns, and the chaos of nations had only whetted and inflamed. But the blood-stained associations, which breathe round St. Helena, find a trying con- trast in those philanthropic visions, which, hovering over our settlements in Western Afri("i, promise to exhibit to the world a vast conquest of bloodless glory, as an ear- liest of the true destiny of the last and great- est of universal empires. Passintr in succession those constellations of the deep, which now blaze in diadems where once they were hardly seen to twin- kle, we hail the impregnable height, which, overhanging the gates of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, makes England arbitress of that commerce, which has expanded so many single cities, whether in succession or in rivalrj', into wide and powerful empires, and, to exemplify on a gigantic scale the daring tactics of our navy, breaks the line of Spain, France, Germany and Russia, se- parating Barcelona from Eilboa, Marseilles fiom Havre, Trieste from Hamburgh, and Sebastopol from Riga. As a worthy ally of this far darkening rock, the little isle, that so long proved her strength, offensive and defensive, against the then waxing crescent of the Turk, watches from her level batteries the narrows of tliis tideless sea ; while, linked with Gibraltar on the west, and on the east with Aden, Malta completes a chain, which draws Canton nearer to London than Calicut was to Tyre. Not contented with the higliway of the Mediterranean, England moors her sentinels at the entrance of every recess. Cerigo, where St. George has dethroned Venus, casts on the gemmed Egean the image of the red cross ; while the sea-girt realms of Ulysses and Alcinous, now more than king- doms, have subjugated on the right one of two seas of Corinth, and on the left wrested from their own former mistress the sceptre of the Adriatic. Leaving this central mirror of wrecked empires, where our country is the neighbour of the southern and the middle states of Europe and of all that savours of civilisation in Africa, vve reach the Norman Isles, which render England as well the Scylla as the Charybdis of the Atlantic commerce of Paris, and divide from each other the outer coasts of France by a second Gibraltar. Nor are the Ionian Isles without their counterpart. If Corfu can shut at pleasure the only maritime outlet of the Austrian Km on the empire meets i nistan, der J ashes Gibra caliphi (juests own vvortjij the cit she ha of the the Ea I'ART I. — BRITISH EMl'IUE. llation?^ iiaileins twin- which, rrancan irbitres^s ided so ssion or 'mpires, ^ale the the line ssia, se- arseilles rgh, and irkening )ved her ainst the watches s of this raltar on n, Malta Canton to Tyre. y of tlie sentinels Cerigo, 1 Venus, image of realms of lan king- ht one of 't wrested le sceptre wrecked neighbour states of ivilisation les, which 11a as the merce of the outer raltar. hout their It pleasure ; Austrian Kinpire, Heliguland hlock^ides the Ell)0,that main artery of the Prussian League. With her trident of crowned sceptres, Tmperial England, after breasting the nar- row seas from Hrittany to Denmark, with an unassailed and unassailable front, com- ])letes her mastery of the waters by dividing alternately with the icy bars of winter the easy and certain dominion of the mouths of the Baltic. But in the parts, as well as in the whole, of this earth, is our country pre-eminent. To the north or to the south of the equator, to the east or to the west of any meridian, in the new world or in the old, on conti- nents or on islands, in torrid or in temperate zone, England surpasses every other power in position and extent. In the latitude and in the longitude of every country, she com- bines in a greater or less degree the climates and the soils of all. Revolving on every circle of longitude, her every instant is a day, while vibrating on every circle of latitude, her every day is a year ; morning and even- ing, noon and night, perpetually chase each other through her skies, while spring and autumn, summer and winter, dance their eternal round amid her fields and forests. But in history, as well as in nature, she asserts her prerogative of omnipresence,seat- ing herself, but not, like Marius, in grief, on the ruins of almost every predecessor in empire. In the valley of the Indus, she meets the memory of Ahasuerus ; in Afgha- nistan, she presses the footsteps of Alexan- der ; in Malta, she finds commingled the ashes of Rome and Carthage ; in Aden and Gibraltar, she unites the extremes of the caliphate ; in India, she has made the con- (piests of Tamerlane but the nucleus of her own ; in the Ionian Isles, she is the only worthy and congenial sharer of the spoils of the city of the waves ; in the West Indies, she has wrested from Spain the first fruits of the heroism of Columbus ; in Africa and the East, she has appropriated to herself tiie chief results of Portuguese iskill, eiiler|»rise and valour ; tliroughout the Soiithern Seas, she has made a mere pioneer of Holland ; in North America, she has lost one empire, and still holds another, within the limits of the discoveries of France. Will other empires seat themselves on her ruins] To the Almighty alone is the future clear ; but so far as the history of her predecessors can enable our mental vision to penetrate the misty veil, Englanti has but little reason to dread such a result. To restrict our comparative view to the col- onial empires of past ages, we find, that, with hardly an exception, they rested on the basis of narrow territory, maritime ha- bits and free institutions. The domestic sway of Carthage, of Venice, of Genoa ex- tended but little distance beyond the walls ol those respective cities ; Portugal was only a strip of mountains ; and Holland was almost literally a marshy den, of which river and sea struggled with man for the apparently useless dominion. Herself a colony, — and that, too, of Tyre, — Carthage recognized her true home on the deep ; Venice, without a metaphor, made a high- way of the blue waters within her very precincts ; Genoa claimed Columbus as a son ; Portugal, whose interior was virtually rendered sea-coast by her mighty rivers, almost equalled in the old world the saga- city and daring of the illustrious discoverer of the new ; and Holland found her natural element in the overhanging floods. Car- thage, Venice, Gt noa, and Holland were one and all republics ; while Portugal en- joyed under a series of wise and munificent sovereigns the brightest examples and the highest rewards of energy and perseverance. Nor is England inferior in any of those elements of colonial dominion. In propor- tion to population, her domestic territory stands more in need of distant appendages than that of any predecessor; her insular position has constantly cherislied and it II 8 CUBHtEK 15UUU. «livniz;llionotl those maritime pivililcclioiis, vvliicli Hlie inherits, — for her soil none hitl sca-kinss could assail, — from her Saxon, Danish and Norman invaders; and her time-honored constitution blends with all the tranquillity of despotism a" the freedom of democracy. But it is in her central strenffth, that England finds, under provi- dence, her best security against the fate of every congenial predecessor. Her domestic empire h-'.s defied tlic world in arms ; it advances at least as rapidly as her cohmies in all the ingredients of national vigour; and through its inexhaustible resources it can, with speed and facility unrivalled, expand its power over any surface, adapt its means to any end. As to the j)hysical power of England, the accpiisition and maintenance of such an empire alfordthc testimony, ecpially conclu- sive and reluctant, of all her rivals. With a thirst for natural boundaries, which no- thing but seas of lier own blood can allay, and with a hatred of England, which cen- tin-ies of ilefeat have rendereil personal ami vindictive, France sees in the islets of her own coast so many impregnable rocks of olT'ence ; animated by the recollection of kingdoms rescued and invaders expelled, Spaiti lost before Gibraltar, — the very height whence the crescent had first gleamed over her valleys, — an armada more powerful tium that, which, after holding Europe in sus])ense and terror, dared to deem England an easy prey ; maddened with the xealous propagandism of democrats, and nerved by tlie patriotic desire of getting rid of their oidy fi)rmidable neighbour, the Americans recoiled from almost unaided Canada with disaster and disgrace. Charged according to its capacity by those floating conductors which telegraph " o'er the nu)untain wave" llie vital fluid of the empire towards every point of every horizon, each possession, however remote or circumscribed, is as se- cure and povvcrl'ul in its own sphere as llie proud isles themselves. Amid the iron of th'^ image there is no clay ; reculciirat iin- (iiqve iutus. Well then does Daniel Webster describe England as " a power, to which, for pur- poses of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her glory, is not to be (compared" ; but an Englishman may, perhaps, value more highly the fact, that, amid all the conceivable temptations of opportunity, she has disclaimed and dis- dained aggression. If she has struck the first blow, she has not given the first pro- vocation ; if she has overwhelmed India witii a tide, tliat never knew to ebb, she has wislied rather to repress the ambition of others than to gratify her own ; if she has scattered her \'ictories from Denmark to N;i])les, and from Portugal to Egypt, she has aimed at no reward more selfish than that of seeing every throne in Europe rise from the dust as a trophy of her prowess. But this spirit of justice and moderation has been to her uu)re than fleets and armies, as well in maintaining as in acquiring empire. In the conquest and government of a hundred millions of subjects, placed at a distance of twelve thousand miles, and beset on every side by ready and powerful partisans of re- bellion, England has never at any one lime employed so many Euro))cans as France has arrayed against a few scattered Barba- rians in the capture and occupation of two or three standing cami)s across a narrow sea. The contrast between India and Algiers is only one of many, with which the history of the hereditary rivals teems ; anil our readers of either origin may derive benefit from reflecting, that the glories of the one country and the reverses of the other are to be ascribed as much to the rnord (pialities of their governments as 1o tlie military qualities of tiieir sons. Divine providence, as well as human miture, has been at work, fi)r it is only in this world that nations can receive their reward. war. PART I. — BRITISH EIMriRE. i) .; iron <>l Htnit un- : descrihc for piir- l))iigjilion, is not to aan niav, fact, that, Latioiis of a;ul dis- slruck tlie .^ first pro- uod Irulla bb, she has nihitioii of if^hc lias cninark to ■pt,^hc has I than tliat i rise from ,ve!^f^. But :)n has been es, as well mpire. lu fa hundred distance of .^t on every isans of rc- ly one lime as France ered Barba- ition of two !s a n;trro\v India and with wliich vals teems ; may derive lories of the of the other () the moral ; as to the lis. Divine l\ ntiture, has I this world eward. But it is ill stdl nobler careers of enter- prise, that the modern mistre.^s of the world surpasses the ancient : Kxcuileiu alii siiiriintin inoUins rera, Crcilo cqiiidein, vivos durciil tie niamiorc vdUus, Orabunt cuusas melius, ('(cliqiie intatus nt'scrilinnl radio, (dsurfirnlia sidiTa dicent. Til ifgere iiiiperio populos, lloniuiiu, lUdiiento. Territorial aggrandisement, the exclusive and ultimate aim of Rome, occupies but a secondary and subservient place in the aspi- rations of England. She has girt the world with her strength, in order to impregnate it with those blessings, that have renderetl her- self enlightened, prosperous and happy be- yond all the examples of history and all the anticipations of fancy, — liberty without li- centiousness, industry without servitude, subordination without exclusion, govern- ment without tyranny, civilisation without elVeminacy, religion without superstition. While every predecessor in universal em- pire unwittingly promoted the Indden pur- poses of The Almighty, England, now that the fulness of time is approaching, stands forth on all the highways and byways of the globe as their conscious missionary to the nations. Nor is this the only, or even the main, distinction. While all the pre- paratory and indirect instruments of Provi- dence fulfilled their destiny by means of war, which had an edge for the victor as well as for the vaiujuished, this the final and direct vice-gercnt of Heaven identifies the discharge of her duties with the difl'u- sioii of mutually beneficial commerce, thus reconciling the purest and holiest philan- throi)y with the brightest and loftiest ])a- triotism. To earn the renown for which she pants, she must lock the temple of Janus; and who so fit a guardian of the fatal key as one, whose name is a trumpet of victory, and whose meshes enclose pledges of peace from almost every power on the globe. Beginning with her colonies, she renders them in wm-cossion miniatures of herself, ami subdividing among them lior dominion o( nature's network of waters, she studs the earth with so many subordinate centres of her pervading energy, destined to meet each other in their gradually advancing periphe- ries. Influencing the worid rather through com- merce than through war, England relies less on her collective prowess than on the individual enterprise of her sons ; in a <-on- flict, equally honorable and gigantic, she " expects every man to do his duty." Nor have her children been deaf to her call. In Soudi America, they have assisted in breaking a tyranny, which, tho',:'jh it had laid aside its bloodhound, was stiii die dark- est that over disgraced oppressor or degrad- ed victim ; amid the burning sands of Af- rica and the frozen wilds of North America, they have lavished life in the common cause 01 science and humanity ; throughout the heathen worid, they alone have rendered intelligible to every creat.ure the glad tidings of the gospel of peace ; in the old continent and in the new, in monarchies and in ivpublics, they have nursed every great undertaking, agricultural, commercial or political, by the application of their super- fluous wealth. — But for some of the most brilliant even of her national achievements England has been indebted to the ahnost spontaneous heroism of individual sons. In the Carnatic and Bengal, a young civi- lian, exchanging the pen for the sword and smiting Hindoos and Mahonnncdans, Dutch and French " like a planet," laid the true foundation of our eastern empire in "the awe-struck minds of men ;" in Acre, the commander of a frigate drove back from almost imtenablc ramparts a war- rior, who, afttM' having numbered his campaigns by conquests and his months by victories, w. pressing onward to surpass in India his triumphs of Italy and Egypt ; in Herat, surromuled on all sides by crowned vassals of the c/ar, was lately exhibited to the tribes of Central Asia, who had known India onlj as a slave, the s|)ectaclt' of -, 10 CUIJBEER BURR. solitary oflicer of our Indian army s>leiiiniiiig llie conibined torrent of Persian ferocity and Russian intrigue. But in the chival- rous devotedness of her Pottingers, her Smiths and her Chves, the collective ener- gies of Enjiland are at work. Full faith in her prowess and fortune is the a^gis, which makes lions of her friends and deer of her foes, rendering impossibilities possible to in- trepidity, and possibilities impossible to dis- may. " The voices of the dead sound like a distant torrent's fall." The steadily swelling breath of the past fans to a daily brighter glow the fires of the present. In the east, the echo of Plassey has rebounded with mightier and mightier volume from a hundred fields of victor}', till, hushed all other sounds, it fills the welkin of more than the empire of the Mogul ; in the west, the memory of Cressy, refreshed and recruited in many a preparatory conflict by sea and land, has consummated its resistless inspira- tion in the crowning triumph of Waterloo. Will you, Canadians, renounce your interest in a growing empire, which even now shines among the nations as the full moon among the dimmed stars? Will you rob your children of an accumulating inher- itance of gloiy, which already nerves its possessors into supernatural energy for deeds of generosity, enterprise and valour? Will you employ a union, which hope and fear arc alternately cradling into a doubtful existence, as a wedge for rending asunder a union, which destiny and virtue have conspired to foster into vigorous anil enduring maturity ? Will you plunder, — and that on a woman's brow, — the diadem, of which, as a heritage equally rich and permanent, you have so lately welcomed a presumptive wearer in the infant olfspring of your youthful Queen ? Anticipating the indignant response of your pride and your loyalty, we shall try in the sequel to find them allies in your policy and your prudence. INTER come ( suprema cussion : shewing, fidelity, her color in parti ci anxious i desires, has been certaini; ciliatory of her CO lioration with all have bee rience, not been For a strength glory. En debted to Englan if not esse on her ct naval vict perience warfare, i must be re Now of a to be only tl PART II. UNITED KINGDOM. INTEREST IN THE FIDELITY, TRANQUILLITY & WELFARE OF ITS COLONIES. |0 induce you to put the most favor- able construction on every unwel- come display of England's controlling supremacy, — as well as to render the dis- cussion more complete, — we shall begin by shewing, that she has such an interest in the fidelity, the tranquillity and the welfare of her colonies in general, and of our province in particular, as must render her uniformly anxious to gratify all our safe and rational desires. If, during the last sixty years, there has been an error in her colonial policy, it certainly has not been the want of a con- ciliatory deference to the supposed wishes of her colonists ; and in so far as the ame- j lioration of the system,— for the change, with all its faults, is for the better, — may have been the result of dear-bought expe- rience, the loss of the old plantations has not been altogether an unmitigated evil. For almost every element of national strength, national prosperity and national glory, England is more or less deeply in- debted to her distant possessions. England's maritime supremacy actually, if not essentially, depends in a great measure on her colonies. Notwithstanding all the naval victories of Rome over Carthage, ex- perience teaches, that, at least in modern warfare, a military navy, to be efficient, must be recruited from a commercial marine. Now of a commercial marine there appear to be only three sources, fisheries, domestic C trade and external traffic. Of fisheries the most valuable in the world must follow the political fortunes of British America, of which all the parts, whatever may be their common relation to England, are indissolu- bly connected with each other ; through the miracles of science and art, domestic trade, to say nothing of its being gradually diverted into inland channels, daily requires fewer vessels in proportion to its cargoes and fewer seamen in proportion to its vessels ; and of external traffic the foreign department, even if not closed by enmity or caprice, may by policy be opened only to the floating nur- series of hostile navies. The main stays, therefore, of England's maritime supremacy are her colonial fisheries and her colonial traffic ; and whether the bottoms and crews immediately belong to the metropolitan state or to the dependent province, they are all, as well those employed in the domestic trade as in the external traffic of each colony, po- tentially available for imperial purposes. — But England draws from her colonies the body, as well as the soul, of her navy, tin; pine of America, the teak of India, the oak of Africa and the mahogany of Honduras, and thus escapes iVom the false position of being at the mercy of rivals for the verv essence of her relative supcriorily. — lir these respects, the value of the colonies can hardly be over-rated. Besides being the only conceivable bond of un onmiprescnt 12 CUBBEER ISUini. empire, the navy is tlic host and broadest "i; Id of the United Kingdom itself. While fr- md-lockcd Russia or to impervious ^rce, viewed without reference to colo- '! •,, maritime supremacy would impart ciicrty the luxury of doing mischief, it is to England with her deeply indented shores a necessary of life. Her only mode of warding olTfrom the happy firesides of her sacred soil the unknown hoiTors of invasion, — for her polity abhors standing armies at liome, — must ever be the potentiality of sweepitig any possible league of continental ilasrs from the breast of the ocean. On the seas there can be no balance of power. — They always have had, and always will have, one lord paramount ; and, if England, ill the meanness of economy or the madness of liberalism, abdicate their dominion, she will discover, that she has thrown down the palladium of her existence, the mastery at once of the deep and of herself, as a prize to tlie am'.' '.' 'I' ofthe nations. But the efficiency also of the army, though more indirectly than that of the navy, great- ly depends on the colonies. A large force could not be maintained in the domestic empire without either weakening the go- vernment through popular jealousy or en- dangering the people through executive power, without potentially producing either democracy or despotism. The colonies, therefore, form so many engines for recon- ciling external independence with internal freedom, — achieving for an empire what the new barriers ol Paris profess to achieve for a city. Through the instrumentality, moreover, of the colonies, England is the only power in Europe, whose army can continuously or frecpiently see service dur- ing a period of general peace, — a peculiar- ity, which, added to her system of half-pay and pensions, gives her, wherever her stand- ard waves, the veteran nui;leus of an easily disciplined array. Throughout Canada in particular's scattered this « little leaven," in the cottage as well as in the fortress, amid the tangled bush as well as on the trim parade, with the axe in its hand as well as with the sword by its side. By thus inci- dentally gratifying a martial spirit, the col- onics preserve England from that lawless mania, which once rendered her the wan- ton scourge of her neighbours and which has so long goaded France to " run a muck" of ignominious glory against foes of every calibre, Europe, Algiers, Mexico, Buenos Ayies or Owhyhee. In the employment, as well as in the for- mation, of the army and the navy, the col- onies are invaluable to England. As im- pregnable points of support, they enable her in any conceivable war to strike the first blow and to throw the enemy on the defensive. We say impregnable, because, so long as she may choose to maintain her maritime supremacy, her insular posts, are virtually inaccessible to an assailant, and because, if the past is to be an index of the future, her continental possessions are, un- der her auspices, each more than a match, at least on the defensive, for its neighbours. To comprise both kinds of dominion in one and the same instance, and that, too, of a decisive character, France, the most warlike of the continental states, has about one- third more of population than the United Kingdom, and in proportion to popu- lation an army four times more numer- ous. In the event, however, of hosti- lities, England would make Malta and Gi!)raltar the means of despoiling France of a conquest, which for twelve years has caused her blood to flow like water, and France, with her half-million of panting warriors, would be foiled in every attempt to capture either the one or the other. To take an instance also from the new world, Canada brings the weight of England to bear on the weakest side of a rising power, which is otherwise absolutely uncontrolled ; and its influence in this respect may be es- f I'AJii' II. — UNITED KINGDOM. la le fortress, on the trim as well as y thus inci- rit, the col- hat lawless er the wan- and which •un a muck" )es of every ico, Buenos IS in the for- ivy, the col- id. As im- y enable her ike the first my on the !, because, so maintain her liar posts, are issailant, and 1 index of the sions are, un- an a match, at s neighbours, minion in one hat, too, of a e most warlike IS about one- n the United on to popu- more numer- ^er, of hosti- e Malta and iling France of ve years has te water, and 3n of panting every attempt he other. To he new world, of England to I rising power, ' uncontrolled ; !ct may be es- timated from the facts, that, w'/.ile it was in the hands of Franco, it obliged the old colo- nies to cling for protection to England, and that, on the very commencement of the revolutionary stiuggle, its attack was deemed an object of paramount impor- tance. But Canada is an outpost also of monarchy against republicanism, and, as such, may help to support every tlu'one in Europe by exhibiting a visible and pal- pable contrast between the results of the two forms of government. Mr. Papineau and Mr. Bidvvell predicted, tiiat Canada would aid in giving repul)!ics to Europe ; but Canada, if wisely and steadily govern- ed, may yet be instrumental in shielding Europe, and perhaps also in rescuing Amer- ica, from the curse of constituted anarch v. — By being points of support in war, the colonies become guarantees of peace. England has no wish to be the aggressor ; nor are her opponents likely to court col- lision, for even the most fiery blood requires as a stimulant something like a pros])ect of success. Again, to borrow the most apposite illustration, France, however fiercely she may frown and threaten, can find neither in reason nor in passion any adequate motive for provoking a war with England. She must inevitably lose all her external posses- sions, and thus, in the tnie sense of the words, become " one and indivisible;" while her oidy chance of meeting England on equal terms, — for the trite artifice of menacing Hanover is not now available, — must be once more to exhibit herself as the reck- less disturber of Europe, and thus to con- strain her rival, as the conservator of the balance of power and the ally of the banded nations, to re-enact the dramas, if not of Thoulouse and Paris, at least of BIcidieim and Rumilies, of Dettingen and Minden, of Vittoria and Waterloo. Under this head may be remarked one of many characteristic dilVerences be- twcoji the colonies of England and those of Spain, — difierences, which are suilicient to disarm any anti-colonial argumciit drawn from the history of the Spanish Empire. The colonies, then, of Spain, not unlike Spain herself, were literally excluded from all the rest of the world ; and it is a singular truth, that one of the most extensive em- pires on which the sun ever shone, was h-o situated as to possess ]et*s iniluence in the scale of nations than its revolted depend- ency of Holland. But what, says the economist, are war and peace, when compared with revenue ? So lar as the expense of maintaining the colonies is used as an argument for getting rid of iheni altogether, it may Vc ;'.pplied with a much greater force to the army or to the navy or to the debt or to the jiaupers or to the Queen ; but without condescending more formally to examine the economist's organs of inference, we shall confine our in- quiry to his implied premises. As almost every colony defrays the charges of its own internal administration, the national exche- quer, generally speaking, is burdened witli the cost only of the naval and military esta- blishments, — and in India, and partially, we believe, in some other colonies, not even with that. Not to repeat our previous view, that England is tlic debtor of her colonies, as so many constitutional camps of a stand- ing army, we shall for the sake of argument admit, that the expenditure in question is incurred for purely colonial objects. \\ hat then 1 To meet the e(•ononli^t oi\ liis own ground of pounds, shillings and pence, may not the colonies increase the wealth of the United Kingdom in a higlier ratio than it^^ taxation and thus really lighten the very burden whicii tliey mimlnally aggravate 1 Postponing an answer to this ([uestion, we shall leave the economist to digest tlie curl • ous fact, that, while Spain, as a state, was extorting a large revenue out of her co!onic^-, the Spaniards, as a people, sank in them their industry, their enere'cs and their liber- 14 CUnnEFR BURR. r I ft! tics lojretlier. — Hut incidentally to glance at the interests of indivithmls, is it not worth the while of every male adult in the United "Kingdom to contribute his penny or even his lwi> ]>enf'e a-week in order to secure tor hiiuseifand his family within the limits of iiis coinitry a le^fal riirht to so many proud and honorable asylums against the accidents of fortune ! Match us, ye idolaters of gold, sncli a benefit-society as this. — Here our et'ononiisf, finding our curious tact indiges- tible, points triuniphanlly to the grand total of the e\pen;'e of (pieirmg the insiu'rections in the Canadas. What then? Was not tliat very expense in a great measure the result of his economy ? Were not those very insurrections mainly prompted by the belief which he had inspired, that Canada, if made more expensive to the mother-coun- try by threats and violence, would be aban- doned] May not we. moreover, fairly throw into the opposite scale the incomparablv larger stim saved by making India instead of En«;land the centre of iinperial operations against China, by assailing the most ancient, most popuKms and most distant entpire on earth with hardly a consciousness of the en- terprise in a single dock-yard, in a single barrack, in a single olVice of the United Kingdom ? The modes, in which the colonies richlv repay the mother country lor the cost, if cost there be, of maintaining them, are too ob\ ions to require much elucidation. — Far beyond the meaning of Napoleon, England is a nation of shopkeepers. Her everv colony is an emporium for its neighbours, opening markets lor her exports, and waft- iiiL'; into her harbours the products of its adjacent climes, — in spite of wars, in spite of jealousies, in spite of imposts. To take the most appropriate example. Canada, while I'aiiht'ul, must secure to England, in- dependently o( any and every change of circumstances, a largo share both of the buying and of the selling trade ot'tJie United States. By commanding a frontier, which for fiscal purposes is hopelessly indefensi- ble, Canada may be said to transform the duties of the tarilfinto bounties ; while, in the event of war, the tobacco and the cot- ton o( the south, unless previously super- seded by the produce of our own colonies, will, if permitted by England, seek and find a market by every outlet on the lakes. — But the production and the consumption of the colonies themselves, even if not points of support in foreign trade, are invaluable to England. With respect to the former head, the day is not far distant, when our country will cease to be fettered in her po- litical intercourse with the nations by the necessity of ransacking a jealous world for the raw material of her power and her pros- perity ; while, against the opposite, and, per- haps, equally fatal, extreme of exclusive- ness, she is secured by the exuberant capi- tal, the enterprising skill, the untiring indus- try and the infinite wants of her matchless civilization. With respect, again, to con- sumption, every colony creates a market, more certain, if not more valuable, than the markets which it opens. Such market every considerable colony creates in two ways, — immediately by ameliorating the condition of its immigrants and mediately by lacilitating the multij)licationof the race. But the capitalist, as well as the manufac- turer and the merchant, finds in the colonies a field, equally vast and productive, for his enterprise, in cutting canals, in construct- ing railroads, in establishing banks, — re- ceiving higher interest than at home and exposing his principal to less hazard than in foreign stocks. — Xor is it only within the colonies that England reaps such a variety of pecuniary advantages from her colonists. Into her own bosom flows many a fortune ot colonial growth, enlarging her resources and holding out to the ambition of her younger sons an inheritance more dazzling than that of the law of primogeniture. — I'ART II. — UNITED KINGDOM. 15 if, which ndefensi- form the while, in 1 the cot- y super- colonies, [ and find lakes. — mption of not points nvaluable le former when our in her po- ns by the s world for 1 her pros- ), and, per- exclusive- rant capi- ring indus- niatchless in, to con- a market, e, than the ■h market tes in two rating the mediately »f the race, manufac- le colonies ictive, for construct- anks, — re- lome and ard than in tviihin the h a variety r colonists, a fortune resources on of her dazzling eniture. — With regard also to the humbler class of emigrants, the parochial burdens must be lightened to an extent, which, though it cannot be ascertained, has long been considerable and may easily be rendered more so. There may, it is true, be emi- gration without colonisation ; and the Imperial Parliament (may it speedily wipe out the blot I) has tacitly permitted parishes to promote, and that, too, with bor- rowed money, the emigration of the poor to any foreign soil, — an anti-national sacrifice, which nothing can justify, save and except such a grinding necessity as cannot press the British Empire for centuries yet to come. But, so far as our main argument is con- cerned, it is rather in form than in sub- stance, that emigration exists without col- onisation, inasmuch as, when it does not flow into England's present dependencies, it flows chiefly into lands, which England has colonised. The natural and essential connexion of the two may farther be esta- blished by the fact, that the United King- dom, while colonising on a scale of unex- ampled magnitude and extent, is the grand feeder of the United States, annually swell- ing the census of the republic with a popu- lation sufiicient under the existing law to add a new Stale to the Union. Nor are the incidental benefits of emigra- tion less worthy of our notice. To Eng- land, with her naiTow limits, her teeming population, her unequalled distribution of soil and her almost living machinery, asy- lums for her surplus offspring are so many safety-valves for that discontent, which must otherwise burst forth in domestic broils or in foreign hostilities. But, without refer- ence to her peculiar circumstances, it pre- serves the national character from the lethar- gy of stagnation, by holding out an indefinite list of contingent prizes to talent, industry and ambition. Without colonies a coun- try can avoid becoming a dead sea only by opening periodically the sluices of war ; while a country, whose boundless fields, that need no fallow, perpetually woo the overflowing energies of her sons, resembles our own welling lakes, which in the full flow of life and pride pour from their per- ennial springs one of the mightiest tributar- ies of the ocean. In England, however, this inspiring tendency of emigration is pe- culiarly beneficial, inasmuch as the aristo- cratic nature itself of her institutions of in- heritance throws off" into the democratic arena of stirring competition almost every class of her infinitely graduated society. To the vast variety of tastes and qualifications, which an ennobling necessity thus plants as pinions in the wings of the empire, an equally vast variety of lures and tasks is presented in every clime of every zone ; while, to mark another point of difference between Spain and England, Spanish Am- erica presented at least to the earlier adven- turers only the lure of gold for the taste of avarice, only the task of oppression for the qualification of cruelty. England's colonial dominion brings her sons, as the most bene- ficent of friends and the most terrible of foes, into contact with all the races of the species, all the shades of color, all the forms of government, all the modes of war- fare, all the varieties of creed, all the grades of civihzation. Nor can this universality of foreign renown fail to be a spur, if a spur be needed, in the flanks of England herself. What ! Shall the daughters be pre-eminent abroad, and the mother less than pre-eminent at home ? Italy, the only land to be com- pared with our own, sinks into insignificance before England. In the empires of arms, of religion, of discovery, of language and of laws, these illustrious mothers of heroes acknowledge each in the other her only rival ; but in this flames the transcendant glory of England, that the empires, which Italy has held in succession, she simultane- ously grasps ; that the work, for which, in its parts, Italy has required the lapse of a CUBBEEIl BURU. it til hundred ages, she exhibits, as a whole, to every rolling day. — Like the colonising tree of Hindostan, of which the main trunk ex- pands as the subsidiary trunks multiply, the United Kingdom, while teaching every ac- cessible desert to " rejoice and blossom as the rose," has seen its own population aug- ment far more rapidly than that of any other European monarchy ; and, as if to shame man's reason, this highest rate of increase has been attained precisely where the existing pressure of jostling myriads always seemed to render it least attainable. But to de velope more fully this last and great- est of the miracles of emigration, the nurse has more than grown with the growth, and more than strengthened with the strength, of her sucklings. During the sixty-five years of American Independence, England has virtually continued to be a mother- country to her revolted colonies ; and yet, notwithstanding the direct results of this di- verging relation on the populousness of the respective countries, her population has kept pace, after making due allowance for the studied increase of human cattle among the zealots of freedom, with that of the thirteen old republics of the United States. Those republics, it is true, have been, as well as the twin isles, an ojficina gentium ; but the diircrence between their immisra- tion and their emigration, — the actual amount of their boon to the basin of the Mississippi,— has been pretty nearly balanc- ed by the colonization proper of the twin isles themselves.— Nor can England ever fail to derive similar advantages from emi- gration. In her case, insular position and the great distance of colonial asylums ren- der impossible such wholesale expatriation as Spain and France, to their own irrepar- able injury, respectively inflicted on the Mahommedans and the Protestants. Her happy circumstances facilitate the prun- ing of the tree but forbid the cutting of it down. " Britannia needs no bulwark, no tower along the steep," whether to repel her assailants or to confine her children ; so long as nature demands the ship as a passport, her emigration cannot be carried to excess without proportionally promoting her maritime supremacy. Surely, then, England has every reason to rule her colonies with the most indulgent consideration. Will she alienate those, whose fidelity essentially contributes to her own grandeur? Will she irritate those, whose tranquillity can alone secure patriotic havens for her exuberant progeny 1 Will she fetter those, whose welfare is intimately interwoven with that of the most influential classes of her domestic population 1 She will do none of these things, and least of all to our adopted home. She will never forget that our fair and fertile fields are for her humbler children the most eligible of all her asylums, that our wide and commanding market is the best monopoly of her looms and her forges, that our gi-eat and grow- ing pre-eminence among her dependencies renders us for good or for evil the guid- ing star of her colonial dominions. But many is the blessing, which the wrath of man embitters into a curse ; and we fear that a consciousness of our value is the most fatal rock in our path. Engendered by impatience, and too often fostered by conciliation, our besetting sin has been to meet any unpopular exhibition of power by generally unmeaning words of violence. If, in certain quarters, an attitude of defi- ance is still to be admitted as the most co- gent of arguments, expunge it at least from our system of logic, because, to say noth- ing of nobler reasons, it may again, when we least expect it, unmoor us on a sea of troubles. To threaten rebellion is to rebel, so long as pride and consistency arc deemed to be virtues. But supposing independence to be desirable and attainable, habitual me- naces of physical resistance form an omi- nous foundation for any government. Those, I ', ■• \ i :,9 PART 11. — UNITED KINGDOM. ■ to repel children ; ship as a be carried promoting ?ry reason indulgent ite those, ites to her ate those, re patriotic 17 ny' Will intimately influential ion 1 She least of all will never s are for her le of all her Dmmanding 'her looms and grow- jpendencies 1 the guid- ns. zh the wrath and we fear rvalue is the Engendered fostered by has been to of power by of violence, ude of defi- the most co- at least from to say noth- again, when on a sea of 3n is to rebel, y arc deemed independence habitual me- form an omi- ment. Those, who defy their rulers to-day, will be .set at naught by their subjects to-morrow; nor can there be any doubt, that the "tea party" of Boston, to borrow the flippant term of our neighbours, is invisibly at work in the almost universally diffused mob-spirit of the Union. Forget not, that we have tlic scili^llness and the pride, as well as the justice and the generosity, of England to rely oji ; ijut, if we do forget this motive for filial con- fidence, at least proceed to reflect that Ca- nada, as well as England, is vitally inter- ested in the integrity of the empire. ( Itl r PART IIL CANADA. INTEREST IN THE INTEGRITY OF THE EMPIRE. OMPARED with its potential means of subsistence, our province is very thinly peopled. Without aiming at extreme precision, it equals the metropolitan isle in the extent of land capable of culture and in the natural fertility of the same ; and yet the whole population of the former is to the whole population of the latter as one to six- teen, to its tillers of the ground as one to eight, and to the citizens of its capital as one to two. That we are to overtake what others have never approached, is hardly to be anticipated; but, if in the comparison we substitute even Russia for Great Britain, we arrive at a result similar in kind, if not in degree. This marked inferiority affects not merely our collective pride but our individ- ual interests, for a certain density of popula- tion, — and in kw instances have we yet attained it, — is an indispensable element in really civilized life. Without it we are shut out of the world by almost impassable roads, we must deny ourselves all the charms of social intercourse, we must be contented with an inadequate supply of schools, and we must labour under a want of the minis- trations of the gospel. But without the aid of contrast, let us glance at the fact in its simplest and roughest form. In the upper portion of the province, which we select as having alone been accurately surveyed, there are in round numbers 90,000 lots of 200 acres each ; and at the rate of fifty acres to a family of five, these lots may without the application of science or of capital maintain in ease and comfort 1,800,000 human beings — about four times the present population — over and above the requisite supplement of traders, mechanics and the like. — Scarcity of men, therefore, is the grand grievance, which, to the comparative ne- glect of all lesser evils, we must unite to remove " with a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together." To remove this grand grievance, we must hold fast our allegiance to our father-land. The calamities which have already re- sulted in both portions of our province from difference of origin, cannot fail to inspire us with the highest possible estimate of the comparative value of homogeneous additions to our existing population. Such additions we can receive only from the United King- dom ; but from it, so long as we remain tranquil, we are sure to receive them in each revolving season. Throughout the length and breadth of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, habit and affection are silently, but constantly, at work in our favor. The settlers of this year are a magnet to the settlers of the next ; and every brother, as he lands on our shores, may be considered as the forerunner of a crowd of relatives and friends, as an " agent for emigrants," who, within the range of his influence, gives us the gratuitous benefit both of precept and of example. I'AllT 111. — canai;a. 19 strong ive must •-land. !ady re- ice from I spire us of the idditions additions id King- remain them in lout the jcotland, :ion are ir favor, it to the T, as he iered as ^es and ^" who, rives us It and of I But recruits of our own race, besides be- ing most likely to amalgamate integrally with ourselves and least likely to disturb the peace of our community, surpass all others in their powers of labour. Industry, which is purely an acquired faculty in man, is en- gendered, though not limited, by the ne«'cs- sity for its display. To take the striking examples of Scotland and Holland, the Scotch have been compelled to find in in- dustry the means of subduing the starving stubbornness of soil and climate, and the Dutch the means of redeeming their sunken sandbank alike from " the fountains of the great deep" and from " tbc windows of Heaven." Now England and Ireland, though less immediately spurred by nature into toil, have at least through a series of favoring circumstances attained such a strug- gling density of population as demands from every man, be his calling what it may, the full and unrelaxed tension of all his powers. Thus, by one of the happiest provisions of providence, the bones and sinews and tal- ents of our brethren are most useful tons precisely because they can best be spared at home. The United Kingdom, hov/ever, pours the fertilising stream of its emigration into co\mtries, which form no part of its empire Triis ; but Canada, if it follow the United States in the path of revolution, will htirdly enjoy the gootl fortune of the vast republic in continuing to be flooded by the same glo- rious tide. The instant, that our province stands in the same relation, as the United States, to England, it focfeits all and every the advantages, which have hitherto enabled it to maintain a hard and doubtful battle against the exaggerated, but still credited, attractions of the varied paradises of the boinidless west. Either through the bounty of their go- vernment, or by their own choice, we owe our most valuable immigrants to our being a portion of the British Empire. Besides olli- D cers of the army and the navy, we allude to more numerous, though less dehnitc, classes of individuals, who, clinging in their hearts to the home which they reluctantly aban- don, strive, as far as possible, to divest ex- patriation fif its stings by taking refuge among coni:enial liabits, congenial tcelings, congenial institutions, — who, finding the original to be unsuitable to tlieir means, try at least to exchange it for a copy. For the great ma^s ot'our immigrants, we are indirectly indebted to a branch of com- merce, which confess(!dIy exists ilirough the maternal indulgence of England. By caus- ing a very large excess of lionieward freights, the timber-trade renders tlie ex- pense of outward passage almost nominal ; and, thus more than realising the wildest fable of anticjuity, it transforms the felled trunks of the forest into the living limbs of human beings, free, industrious and happy. But over and above the influence of inde- pendence, when attained, on imniigratit)n, the troubles, which cannot fail to precede a separation from a mother-country of match- less power and inexhaustible resources, must cut otT, at least for a time, this living source of our prosperity. Nor is such a tide, when once made to ebb, very likely to flow again. To render more clear the connexion be- tween our inunigration and our politic!.! condition, let us examine more closely the ground, on which that connexion, as we have admitted, may he plausibly denied. The neighbouring union does certainly re- ceive inunigrants from the United King- dom. But, with far more captivating pro- mises of material happiness, it does not receive in proportion to its extent or its population one fourth part of the number which falls to the lot of our less favored clime. On the most extra\ agant supposi- tion, tiierefore, our present share of the blessing must, in the event of independence, be reduced to one quarter of its aniiu; I ! amount. 20 CUBUEER liUKK. -I I VI Nor does the actual sum of our popula- tion, any more than its extrinsic increase, }s lliun one lliiril olllml in 1813, — the- respective aiiioiinis IhIm:; 3r)l,3:'3 ami 103,093, Will the reach r, till lir ascerlalll llu; contrary liy iiuiuiry, caiuliilly an ijit tliis iioto as » rollaiernl voui lici- o( any ."cneriil Hliitciiuiit, that iiiuy irii tally with his provioui oiiiiiiori' ? though the children, in imitation of their own unique example in the history of man- kind, lie in wait to throw down the parent already overborne by an embattled world, — it will most certainly produce an equally flattering result of captured vessels, ruined trade and sealed iiarbours. Tn short if in- dependence has multiplied ships, it has peri- odically thinned them, and constantly ren dtM's their very existence dependent (what a commentary on independence !) on the will of England. Let the balance be fairly struck between the good and the evil. Our argument n(?eds nothing more ; justice can be satisfied with nothing less. Nor are our internal communications less likely than our external trade to suffer from separation. To our connexion with Eng- land we clearly owe the almost gratuitous gift of the Welland and the altogether gra- tuitous gift of the Rideau, — canals, to which every thing of the kind among our neigh- bours is a mere ditch. But even with res- pect to their boasted " improvements," their independence (another commentary on the word !) has been dependent on England for every essential element. Ireland has con- tributed nearly all the labour, while Great Britain has lent much of the capital ; so that the young republic, if really left, ac- cording to its theoretical aspirations, to manage its own affairs, would hardly have had sufficient grounds even for plausi- ble exagtreration. The services of our Irish brethren, though acknowledged in the peculiar style of republican gratitude, have never been denied ; and the admitted claims of British s!ock-holders make the pointless sneers about the nominally nation- al debt of England recoil sharpened antl liarluMJ into the vitals ol' America to the tunc of thirty fi\(> mHiions sterling. All these benefits, it is true, America has received in Bpite of separation ; but, to omit the evils of past ho.nililies, the graml distinction between ourselves, ns colonists, ami our neighbours, as will fjalu pioi i of tlieir of man- ; parent vorld, — equally 3, ruined irt if in- lias peri- ntly rcn It (what ) on the he fairly •ii. Our stice can itions less ifi'er from ith Eng- ^ratuitous 3ther gra- to which ur neigh- with res- Is," their y on the I gland for lias con- ile Great Ipital ; so left, ac- [tions, to II hardly |ir plausi- of our 'dged in ;ratitiide, ladniittcd liake the nation- Ined and ihe luno ,11 these leived in p evils of hetween Igh hours, I'ART III. — CANADA. •23 as ioreigners, is this, that any future war, while it must entirely cut ofi' from them the [falutary stream, will pour it vhe more co- piously on us. So far as capital is con- cerned, England has already been doomed hy them to stuily more than one forcible lesson ; and at this moment she is more sensibly fettered by the national debt of America than by her own, lest war be- come partly a cause of insolvency and part- ly a pretext for confiscation. But the Am- ericans, though neither industrious nor wealthy, are undeniably enterprising. Le- gislation, in wliich there is more of pay than of risk or of labour, is their /or/e in the work of '-improvements"; but we find in the Statute-Book ample proof, that they pos- sessed this/o7'fe in perfection long before the fourth of July, 1776. The inquisitive rea- der we refer for the germs of the " go aliead" principle or, according to circumstances, want of principle to 14, Geo. 2, ch. 37, — 24, Geo. 2, ch. 53,-4, Geo. 3, ch. 34, and 13, Geo. 3, ch. ch. 57. On the whole, we may fairiy presume, that in "improvements", as well as in po- pulation, our neighbours have rather lost than gained by independence ; and it is at least certain, that the general government, their characteristic badge of distinct nation- ality, has done less in this department for the w'lole union put together than the mo- ihcr-countiy has done forour'province alone. Nor has the parent in return for her gen- erosity demanded from the children any unworthy sacrifices. It is true, that we are subject to a legis- lature, in which we are not represented. — So are many, perhaps most, of our friends and relatives at home, but with these diller- ences in our favor, that their subjection is universal and constant, but our subjection partial and occasional, that we can remon- strate through our local legislature with a collective voice hut that they possess nei- ther in law nor in fad any collective barrier against oppression. Tiiough the choicest food of the colonial demagogue's declam- ation, yet the grievance is by no means a colonial peculiarity. In so far as the hereditary branches of the legislature con- trol the House of Commons, all classes at home whether enfranchised or not, are sub- ject to the legislation of those, who are not their representatives ; while to an extent, which investigation alone can render credi- ble even to professional men, judges, under the humble guise of interpreters, have in all ages enlarged and restricted, framed and abrogated, laws at their will and pleasure. Even in the United States, moreover, may be found both the legislative and the judi- cial analogy. The District of Columbia, though the only portion of inhabited terri- tory over which Congress exercises unlimit- ed or even general authority, yet sends nei- ther vote nor voice into either house ; while in the Union as a whole, and in most, if not all, of the separate States, every legislative act is liable to be " revers- ed" or " afiirmed" by the supreme tribu- nals. — But setting theory and analogy aside, our subordination to the Imperial Parlia- ment is neither of necessity nor in fact a practical evil. Valuable beyond all names of value as is the popular element in the government of England as a whole, yet local representation and local prosperity, whether of towns or of counties or of kingdoms, bore till very lately — and that with few exceptions — an inverse ratio to each other. Whatever may have been tlie follies of former days, the Pariiament of the United Kingdom has scarcely ever been accused of wantonly interposing its imperial authority, if we except the memorable instance, in which, while testing its sincerity in the cause of freedom by the sacrifice of a hundred millions of dollars, it evinced with pecidiar emphasis its paramount ven- eration at once for humanity and for jus- tice j and with respect to both division:? of 24 CUBBEER BURU. our own province in particular, whether viewed together or separately, that au- gust body has more than once laid us un- der a heavy debt of gratitude, as the dis- passionate reforuier of laws, as the disin- terested arbiter of di (Terences, as the elastic regulator of privileges. Nor do we find any exception to the rule in those general displays of parliamentary supremacy, which affect the colonies merely as a part of the empire. In the Navigation Laws, for in- stance, we see all the subjects of England, save the Lascars of India, standing on the same level as her citizens, — not a single trace of that thraldom, which in Spanish America practically regulated the rights and prospects of a colonist by the place of his birth. But will separation render us more independent of external legis- lation ? If we join the neighbouring imion, we will exchange one theoretical disqualification for many practical restric- tions. We will have the honor of sending representatives and senators to Washington, that motley mart of professedly unrivalled freedom and really unrivalled bondage ; but in return for the honor we will have to di- vest our own proper legislature of the most valuable of its unquestioned and undoubted powers. That the powers, which we must thus surrender, will be always wielded to our satisfaction, we can hardly anticipate. To say nothing of the whirlwind of wordy indignation, which finds a focus in Con- gress from an infinite series of concentric peripheries, the clang of arms has not un- frequently pronounced equally various but more alarming critiques on the sayings and doings of collective wisdom. As if to as- sert the sacred right of insurrection in all its aspects. South Carolina has seen reason to break a lance with the United States, Maine has been driven to inflict merited chastisement on England, and Michigan and Ohio have been obliged to seek justice from each otlier (hide your heads, ye frogs and mice of antiquity) by a civil war.— Cut disdaining union, for in spirit most of our remarks apply to any union whatever, our young republic may stand aloof " one and indivisible." By this admirable con- trivance, so long as it is in working order, we will doubtless secure the monopoly (^f our own legislation ; but even then, if there is any prophecy in history, our legislation will be a vehicle for the vindictive feelings of alternately victorious factions, — enthral- led by the worst of all external dominions, the influence of the passions of the past over the interests of the present and the fu- ture. In a consolidated democracy, whe- ther larger or smaller, there never has been, and never will be, any other government than the tyranny of a party ; and if in this respect our neighbours have been less un- fortunate than other democrats of ancient or of modern times, they are indebted for the comparatively happy result partly to their inherited laws and character, and partly to their federal relation, which, by distributing the functions of government be- tween mutually jealous bodies, lessens the power of both for usurpation and mounts each as a constitutional sentine. on the other. By the supposition we are to throw overboard the latter safeguard ; through a balanced admixture of antagonist races, which has so long and so vitally affected our condition and destiny, we arc prevented from attaining the former. With two ele- mejits of convulsion, from which even the insubordination of our neighbours is ex- empt, our "one and indivisible" republic must pay triply dear for the monopoly of its own legislation. It is also, true, that our enactments are Mable to the revision of an external execu- tive. This is a natural and inevitable re- sult of the colonial relation, mainly in order that provincial acts may not be repugnant to imperial statutes ; and the legislative history of both divisions of our province has suffi- war.— most of ^fhatever, »of " one ble con- ig order, lopoly ('f 1, if there egislation e feelings -enthral- jminions, the past ul the fu- cy, whe- has been, vernment if in this I less un- f ancient ebted for partly to cter, and ^hich, by iment be- ssens the J mounts on the to throw ihrough a ist races, ly affected prevented h two ele- even the irs is ex- " republic ipoly of its ments are lal cxecu- vitable re- ly in order pugnantto ive history • has suffi- PART III. — CANADA. *2!i ciently demonstrated, that the precaution has not been altogether a dead letter. But neither is this legislative subordination, w^hen fairly considered, a colonial peculiarity. — Not to repeat what we have already said as to the judicial supervision of the legislatures of our neighbours, even the theoretical om- nipotence of the imperial parliament is prac- tically modified by the same executive, which sits in judgment on ourselves, with this almost verbal difference, that a measure is there rejected as a bill but here disallowed as an act, that it is here subject to a con- dition subsequent but there to the more binding obligation of a condition precedent. At home the cabinet has a voice in either house and at every stage, while in the colony it is absolutely mute till all others have decided. Add to this, that our local legislatures have, until the Union of the two Canadas, been suffered of their own free will and proper motion to originate money- bills, which the House of Commons has never proposed but at the express request of the Crown, and we will find, that at least many of the measures, which this imperial prerogative has affected, would, if proposed at all, have been defeated in the imperial parliament. But the grievance, such as it is, does not appear to be removed by inde- pendence, [n the general, as well as, we believe, in every local, legislature of the Union, the Executive has the right of con- trolling any majority less than two thirds of each house, — a right, which it exercises far more freely and unceremoniously than the imperial cabinet exercises its corresponding right with regard even to colonial acts. — The executive, we admit, emanates at least as directly from the people as either house : but the mere introduction of a third branch into the legislature clearly shews, that in the opinion of our democratic neighbours the iiarmony even of two democratic bodirs is not an infallible criterion of truth, justice and wisdom. It is, further, true, that only one of the two houses of our legislature is elected by ourselves. Is not this the case also at home ? As to the respective constitutions of the Legislative Council and the House of Peers, the advantage as to personal abil- ities is clearly on our side, inasmuch as even the worst nominees of the Crown are liiiely to be superior to the best nominees of accident ; as to the respective composi- tions, however, of the same two bodies, the advantage is reversed, because in the colony the crown has a narrower choice than in the mother country. But, without any cor- responding superiority as to constitution, our Assembly, in point of composition, is just as decidedly inferior to the House of Com- mons as is our Legislative Council to the House of Lords. In theory, the crown is surely as competent to select legislators as to appoint judges ; in practice, the crown has always produced in the Legislative Council at least as high an average of (jual- ifications as the people has ever sent to the Assembly. When the demagogue tasks his wit to compare any of the royal nomi- nees with Broughams, or Lyndhursts, or Wellingtons, he may find an equally strik- ing contrast between most of our popular representatives on the one side, and Peels, or Stanleys, or Macaulays on the other. But less of the ridicule, perhaps, is poured on the prerogative of nomination than on the perpetuity of appointment. Under the system of royal nomination, a temporary ap- pointment must either make tlio nominee dependent on the crown or punish both him and the community by his legal dis- qualification for a repetition of the honor ; and, as either remedy is worse than the dis- temper, the prerogative of nomination be- comes the only subject of controversy, as necessarily carrying the perpetuity of ap- pointment in its train. Disdaining the technical support, which the system in question may derive from the fuiidHinontal ir» 26 (UBBKEU Buna. principles of our monarchical constitution, we maintain, tliat in no other way can a community, as such, be fairly represented. If popular electors vote in and for districts, the objects of their choice are merely the representatives of majorities of their respec- tive constituencies. Even at home the theory, that every member, whoever may be his constituents, represents the whole people, has been practically annulled by the subserviency of pledged delegates ; while on this continent, where the predominance of local interests over the general good has been reduced into a system, so salutary a principle has never met even a formal re- cognition. If, on the contrary, popular electors vote, as in many instances is the rule among our neighbours, in and for the whole country, the objects of their choice are not necessarily the representatives of more than the smallest possible majority of the people. Tlie more nearly that parties are balanced, the less correctly can the vic- torious nominees of "general ticket" be said to represent the people ; and, without travelling beyond the last contest between Van Buren and Harrison for the chair of Washington, we can from memory quote Maine as one of several states, in which there appears to have been almost a tie between the two factions in the choice of presic'^ntial electors. But the demagogue says that our Legislative Council does not represent any thing but itself. If one may condescend to notice this play upon words, the demagogue's own quibble implies, that the Le[)[islative Council is the re])resentative of the Crown ; and though the president of a republic may, or rather must, be both the creature and the tool of a faction, the head of a monarchy is the disinterested representative of all his people. But what are the facts ^ Have the representatives of the crown been more selfish than the re- presentatives of the people 1 Have they Hiore recklessly jobbed away the rcsoiu'ces of the country for electioneering popularity 1 Have they more basely wielded a majority to oppress a party or to subvert the govern- ment? Set the answers of our own con- sciences against the sneers of the dema- gogue ; and we fear not for the result. The really practical objection to the Legislative Council is, that it does not alvvavs harmon- ise with the Assembly. Not to dwell on the sophistry, which assumes, that, in every case of collision, the latter body must be in the right and Ihe former in the wrong, an occasional want of harmony, as the grand recommendation of a second branch of the legislature, is eagerly and systematically sought by our neighbours through all the variations of time, place and person. In the event of separation, we must, unless we follow in the wake of revolutionary France with one unchecked mob of lawgivers, la- bour to obtain a fiercer collision, than that which we now condenm, — the collision of those to whom justice is nothing and party every thing. But notwithstanding all our legislative dis- qualifications, the actual power of our pro- \ incial legislature exceeds that of the impe- rial parliament. The one has " a fair field and no favor" for promoting almost every object of general utility ; while the other has to fight its way by inches througli a lux- uriant jungle of local institutions, vested in- terests and aristocratic; prejudices. If tjie omnipotence of the former is occasionally controlled by a master, that of the latter is perj)etually thwarted by almost co-ordinate sul)jccts. But let us not be supposed to consider our legislative position as faultless. Our object has been merely to shew, that the restric- tions, to which we are subject, are not ex- clusively the incidents of our colonial rela- tion ; and, if we may digress a little to guard more certainly against misapprehension on this head, we \\\'n\k, that at least some of them may be advantageously modified or re- ; lax( logii ed, ma\ I'ART 111. — CANADA. '27 la- laxed. With respect to the supremacy of a legit^latiire, in which vvc are not represent- ed, we believe, that tiie theoretical objection may be softened in accordance with the grandest possible conception of the empire. Viewing England and her dependencies as a kingdom " one and indivisible," may not an individual, who has actually exercised, and still retains, a qualification of real pro- perty in any part of the magnificent whole, be allowed to annex his vote to a residence of a certain duration in any other part ? Fraud may be easily prevented by provisions not more stringent than those which already fetter the franchise at home ; and citizens and colonists may be fused into one integral peo- ple, and that, too, perhaps without disturb- ing the balance of parties in a single consti- tuency of the Queen's dominions. — As to the supervision of an external executive, we confess, that the interval for deliberation ought to be materially abridged ; nor can we see any essential difficulty in virtually placing our provincial legislature on a level in this respect with the imperial parliament by rendering the interval somewhat less than the average vacation of our legisla- tive sessions. An improved organisation of the colonial department, such as the colonies, cost what it may, have a right to expect, may surely find six months suffici- ent for the consideration of all the doubtful bills and acts of a year of colonial legislation. As to the constitution of our Legislative Council we do not admit the necessity of any change, unless in so far as an impatience of control may demand some modification as the less of two evils ; and most of all do we deprecate that dangerous aud absurd ap- portionment of that body among the separate districts and the conflicting interests of a community which a late Colonial Secretary in an unhappy dream systcmatiscd in some (tf the neighbouring colonics. The strongest ground, on which the battle of the constitu- tion can be fought, is to fill the upper house with our ablest and most disinterested men, as the representatives not of party but of right, not of classes but of the people, not of counties but of the province. But for all these alleged disadvantages of our colonial relation, we possess an ample balance in its admitted advantages. We have a government, which both promises and secures to all classes and creeds and colours the full enjoyment of property, li- berty, and life against foes within and foes without; and, if it has ever appeared in- competent to t^ulfil its pledges, the fault lies at the door not of the colonial relation itself but of ungrateful and unprinci[)led natures bent on its destruction. If we transfer our alle- giencc to the banner of stars and stripes, — for the idea of our separate independence is unworthy of grave repetition, — we will not only sacrifice our own peace and tranquil- lity but become morally responsible for the unexpiated and inexpiable atrocities of unjust laws and licentious mobs. To pass in silence the outrages, legal and illegal, against foreigners, catholics, gam- blers, abnlitionid'S; and Indians, and also agamst our own borders, let us briefly notice the most damnable anomaly in the political firmament of Christendom. While our neighbours talk by rote of their " free institutions," they possess, we apprehend, only the parrot's knowledge of the meaning of the words. If " institution" implies any- thing more stable than the contemporaneous will of a numerical majority, there is among them but one " institution" and that one is not "free." Each written compact, it is true, between a people in its primary ca[)a- city and its legislature imposes at its con- clusion certain restrictions on any future modifications of itself; but these restrictions are rendered nugatory, if not ridiculous, by that principle of all principle3,that foundation of all foundations, that axiom of all axioms, which, as a standing preamble, asserts the unalienable omnipotence of one unit more 28 CUBBEER BUUR. ft I than the half. Thus the very form of gov- ernment depends at any given instant on the caprice ofniere numbers ; and if the many, as in some countries is actually the case, resolve to hug the chains of absolute mo- narchy, the few cannot with any consistency murmur at the resolution. Tlic nation- al constitution, to be sure, guarantees republicanism to the respective states; but republicanism assumes many shapes on the stage of history from the democracy of Athens to the aristocracy of Venice, from the legal tyrarmy of the Roman Decemvirs tot le military despotism of the First Consul of France. — To illustrate the ephemeral feebleness of the vaunted " institutions" of our neighbours in the most striking and comprehensive way, we quote an in- stance, in which an " institution " of the union was trampled in the mire even ])y a doubtful majority not of a so- vereign state but of a dependent territory. Congress had passed alaw^to raise Michigan from a territory to a state on certain condi- tions ; and after these conditions, and with them a wind-fall of 500,000 dollars, had been legitimately rejected, the disappointed lovers of fdthy lucre rose in their primary might and reversed not merely with impu- nity but with applause the legal result of an act of the supreme legislature. — Slavery, however, is not thus left to the mercy of the varying winds of popular caprice. Accord- ing to the constitution of every, or almost every, slave-holding state, the right of the master is declared to be independent of the collective will, the permanency of this soli- tary and unique " institution" being guaran- toeil l)y the selfishness of any and every in • tcrostcd individual. — But of this, you may reply, the entire responsibility rests on the slave-holding states then -elves. Now, be- fore we take stock in the concern, examine well the articles of partnership. In the na- tional constitution of 1789 we will find, that, if any person "held to labour" (for the document does daintily pick and cull its phrases) escape from the scourges and the gyves and the collars of overtasked starva- tion into the sovereign and independent state of Canada, he will be dragged from our free tribunals to revisit his home, where the fur- nace will doubtless he seven times heated, with bleeding feet, foaming lips and stum- bling limbs ; and as joint tenants, moreover, of the District of Columbia, we will be still more directly interested in the " institution" in question, inasmuch as Congress has avowed its determination not only to tolerate slavery and the slave-trade in that national domain but even to shut its ears for ever as well to the remonstrance of the philanthro- pist as to the cry of the victim. Through independence, then, we will gain at least this zest, that our heaven of freedom will be contrasted in indestructible mosaic with the hell of bondage. But while the national le- gislature thus negatively promotes and per- petuates slavery, the national constitution aims at the same important object by positive provisions. The practically fundamental doctrine of universal suffrage is relaxed in fa- vor of the slave-holding states. As the basis of representation in the lower house of Con- gress, the population of each state is con- structively held to consist of all the citizens and three-fifths of all others, so that South Carolina with about 400,000 freemen has as large a share in the national representa- tion as Massachusetts with about 650,000, — political power being an incident of that kind of property, and of that kind only, which makes a mockery of the rights of man. Will you, O Canadians, exchange your rational and consistent freedom for a system, which protects no institution but bondage, and fortifies against numbers no property but that in the bodies and souls of the wantonly oppressed and studiouslv de- based bondman ? The system, be i ., -m -rc- over, remembered, is loathsome and cor- rupting even beyond first appearances. cull its and the starva- ent state our free the fur- heated, d stum- oreover, 1 be still titution" cess has ) tolerate national r ever as ilanthro- Through at least m will be with the tional le- and per- nstitution y positive damental xed in fa- the basis of Con- e is con- citizens lat South nnien has iresenta- 650,000, [It of that ind onlv, rights of exchange om for a iition but mbcrs no d souls of ouslv de- 1.^ ii'.ro- and cor- carances. PART III. — CANADA. 29 Poor as is the pretext, which color affords for oppression, the slave of our nciglibours may be to all but critical eyes as white as the master, — may in fact be the master's son or the master's brother, the master's daughter or the master's sister, nay the very wife, though unvvedded, of the master's bo- som. Nor are instances wanting, in which fondly cherished and highly educated fe- males have been dragged by the heirs or the creditors of a relative, who had neglect- ed a legal form, from the arms of each other and all the congenial luxuries of a common home, to become the outraged mothers of a progeny only less wretched than themselves. Even when nominally free, the hapless possessor of the least con- ceivable portion of black blood has been well said to be a slave without a master, — subject to the lawless caprice of insolent or unfeelmg individuals and rigidly excluded from some states by the fundamental charters of their freedom. Are not our neighbours consistent in disclaiming all connexion be- tween their equality and that of the Bible, between their republicanism and that reli- gion which begins with the offence of a common ancestor and ends with the atone- ment of a common Redeemer ? Our neigh- bours, it is true, ascribe their slavery to the early policy of England. Be this as it may, its present existence and its prospective per- petuity, — the main points in the discussion, — are rather the result of their own inde- pendence, for, as colonists, they would most probably have been ere now delivered at the mother country's expense from the pes- tilence, which is morally and physically feeding on their vitals. Nor are the advantages of our position less striking on economical grounds. — Through our colonial relation we gratuitous- ly receive what our neighbours purchase, to say nothing of its intrinsic inferiority, with the price of their lands and the proceeds of their tariff, — besides the indefinite bounty on their manufactures, which the tariff col- laterally extorts. The average r^liare of each free person among them, male or fe- male, young or old, is not less than three dollars a year, so that our proportion nuist amount to at least two thirds of a million sterling. Is the independence of our neigh- bours, as it actually exists, worth so much ? Under our present system, national govern- ment is to us a source not of loss but of gain, inasmuch as taxes, of which we pay no share, are scattered among us through- out the length and the breaJth of tlic pro- vince. — But even while furnishing tlie colo- nies with the free gift of national protection, the United Kingdom expends on national government, strictly so called, not more than the United States in proportion to free po- pulation, and, what bears more directly on the point, far less in proportion to wealth. If, to render the comparison complete, we add to the expenditure of the Union, as such, the cost of government proper in each of the separate States, we will arrive at a result still more conclusive in favor of Eng- land, and still more repugnant to the general notions of republican economy. — These ad- mitted truths may surprise those who have derived ideas on the subject from the dem- agogue's comparison of official salaries. With respect to officers of corresponding rank and duties, America has certainly far cheaper bargains than England ; but, if, with lower salaries of individual functiona- ries, the aggregate expenditure is higher, there clearly must be a larger herd of the tribe, — a conclusion, which at once exhib- its the inefficiency of the servant and ex- tends the master's power of corruption. But to descend from patriotism to selfish- ness, an independent form of government may seem peculiarly favourable to the deve- lopement and the reward of individual merit. For attaining personal distinction and for securing an incidental pittance, which often loses all arithmetical respecta ■I f 30 CUBBEEU BURR. f bility of size and sound when translated from dollars into sovereigns the road is undoubt- edly more open in the American Union than in the British Empire. But in a pecuniary view there are among our neighbours few prizes, which are worthy of the acceptance of a man of ability, and still fewer, which offer an adequate return for the inevitable sacrifices of a career of ambition. As to political advancement, how often is the con- fessedly able man set aside by the jealousy even of apparent friends to make room for some harmless thing, which nobody envies because nobody admires : the friends of Webster and the friends of Clay and the friends of Calhoun have united to make two presidents at once out of General Harrison and Mr. Tyler. This fact suggests an es- sential advantage of monarchy over republi- canism even with regard to popular rights. In England the people, like the King, never dies, for the constitution vests in the crown the truly democratic prerogative of sending the representatives, ministers and all, to their constituents ; while in the United States, the constituents can be relieved from the cflTecl? of an injudicious choice of representatives only by lapse of time and are then roused from their political nothingness merely to shout the names of new masters and die again. To bring the matter to a point with- out disturbing the ashes of the dead, is Mr. Tyler of Virginia president by and with the consent of any of the most inconsiderable section of the long million of electors ? But follow the superannuated servants of the two countries into involuntary retirement. In the one country, we see a well regulated bounty supporting the footsteps of age and often prospectively soothing the last anxie- ties of the husband and the father ; in the other we see the highest functionaries of the state borne down by years and poverty together and sometimes doomed to have their children and their children's mother sold, each to the highest bidder, in open market. In the one country, the war-worn charger is pensioned on the sweetest pas- ture ; in the other, he is sent to the shambles. ir fence the apj our ow ofargui sembla born ned, th seas o blance, they oil tlie verl happily cause tl becausj injuredl CONCLUSIOIN. BUT our arguments, whether addressed to a foehng of loyalty or to a sense of interest, may find the breasts of our readers fortified against conviction by the prejudice, that, in the natural and uncontrollable course of events, every dependency is destined sooner or later to become independent. Now let us subject this prejudice to the test of his- torical research. For a long period down to 1707 Scotland had been virtually subor- dinate to England, and for a still longer pe- riod down to 1782, Ireland had actually been so ; and yet at this moment Ireland, England and Scotland are integral parts of one and the same consolidated empire. In those cases the bond, instead of being snapt asunder, has been rivetted in defiance of difficulties as to time and distance, greater than those which now separate the St. Law- rence from the Thames. But you look to the apparently more applicable instances of our own continent. Granting for the sake of argument the full force of the implied re- semblance, let us ask, which of all the new- born anarchies, Spanish, Portuguese or English, is not rather a beacon to be sjiun- ned, than a pilot to be trusted, in the stormy seas of revolution. The implied resem- blance, however, totally fails, inasmuch as they one and all rose against oppression, to the very shadow of which our province is happily a stranger. They revolted not be- cause they had attained their majority, but because they were more or less wantonly injured; and Benjamin Franklin himself somewhere (juaintly confessed, that the old colonies might have been retained by Eng- land for a centurj' through a judicious ex- penditure of pens, ink and paper. But to pass from history to expediency, the preju- dice is more pertinacious to colonies tiian to mother-countries, for it teaches the latter to prolong the subordination of the former by checking their growth, to find a model of colonial government rather in Spain than in England, rather in the tyrant, that held Lima for three hundred years, than in the parent, that saw Philadelphia with some of its original inhabitants alive become the centre of a successful rebellion. The j)rc- judice rests on the analogy, which is pre- sumed to exist between father and minor son on the one hand and metropolitan state and colony on the other, — an analogy better adapted to rhetoric and theory than to logic and practice. In the fulness of time the fa- ther relinquishes control, and so, it is argued, ought the metropolitan state. The analogy, in fact, is miserably defective both in pre- mises and in conclusion. The mere lapse of years approximates the bodies natural more closely to each other than the bodies politic, and more certainly, as well as more speedily, carries the former to ma- turity or beyond it than tlie latter. Again, in every country the emancipated child still remains absolutely subject to the law, and, in every well regulated community sub modo subject to the lather himself, — a measure of independence very dil- 32 CUBBEER BURR. 1 £f u I'ercnt from thai, which, with respect to the metropolitan state, is to make the colony an actual foreigner and a potential enemy. — But, as the heads of families, it would be well to remark, that the analogy is two- edged, and that, without promoting our in- dependence, it may utterly alienate from us our children in succession. Our neigh- hours, according to universal experience, gather this bitter fruit under their tree of liberty ; and, as if absolutely to render every man a compound exemplification of separation and union, the sons of every family, according to the testimony of a recent traveller, at once proclaim independence of their father and establish a federal alliance among themselves. In England, on the contrary, the true analogy may be urged in favor of the colonial relation, for, though a colony without local representation may re- semble the minor child, yet such a colony as ours bears a far closer similitude to the emancipated son. But admitting for form's sake the general soundness o( the doctrine, which we have impugned, the fulness of time will in our case meet almost insurmountable obstacles. Without a single grievance of even plau- sible aspect, the worshippers of alma- nacks will, under any combination of cir- cumstances, encounter the resolute opposi- tion of at least a powerful minority of the population, comprising not merely the loyal enemies of revolution but the prudent haters of violence. Believing, moreover, the pos- session of our province to be an essential element of her grandeur, England will hold us with the tenacity of a death gripe ; and unless we wish fatally to delude ourselves, rather look on Quebec than dream of Sara- toga. Then reflect, how long the sinking monarchy of Spain curbed, through the mastery of a few strong-holds, the insurrec- tionary spirit of colonies more populous and more formidable than our province is likely to be for centuries, — and, to select a more apposite instance, liow long France, with- out daring openly to face England in America, circumscribed her limits, har- assed her settlements and wasted her armies through the instrumentality of a chain of petty forts. — Our neighbours, it is true, will be always ready to support the sacred cause of insurrection. Remem- ber, however, that the united forces will have to attempt the indispensable capture of Quebec under circumstances both posi- tively and negatively more disheartening than those, which almost batfled the gal- lantry of its youthful conqueror. With a force inferior in discipline and experience to Montcalm's, you will have to assail a garrison superior in skill and prowess to the army of Wolfe ; while, opposed by a navy more formidable than that, which covered Wolfe's attack, your every movement will be watched by telescopes of destruction, which bristled not in defence of Montcalm. So far as history is a guide, Englan'l's mar- itime supremacy decides the question, for Quebec, though once taken without aa ar- my, has never been taken without a navy. But suppose the separation to have been effected with or without the aid of our neighbours, we will be constrained to merge our young independence in their unwieldy confederacy. If we e. t:.blish a monarchi- cal form of govcnment, we will be hated as guilty by those officious apostles of re- publicanism, who now pity us as unfortu- nate, and will at last be driven to consider the vaunted "institutions" a« less imme- diately pernicious than the torch and the knife and the rifle of " free and equal " marauders; and even if we adopt republi- canism ourselves, the northern states will not permit us as a separate community, to monopolise the long coveted navigation of our magnificent river. Texas, we admit, has been graciously aUovved to stand aloof ; but Texas is a far less tempting bait than Canada. Jealousies between the north ?, vvith- and in tSj har- ed her y of a ;hbours, support Remem- ces will capture 3th posi- ;arteninL' the gal- With a :perien(;e assail a jssto the y a navy covered tnent will istruction, lontcalnu nd'rf mar- ?stiou, for lut an ar- , a iiavy. lave been .id of our il to merge unwieldy monarch i- be hated ies of re- LS unfortu- to consider ess imme- h and the id equal " )pt republi- states will imunity, to ivigation of we admit, itand aloof; ig bait than the north CONCLUSION. 33 and the soutli on the subject of s^lavery are common to both cases ; but in the former case the material interests of the neigh- bouring states are either indifferent or hos- tile, while in the latter they are allured by the prize of the cheapest, easiest and short- est passage to the ocean. Put Louisiana in place of Texas to make the cases more parallel ; and then consider, whether a country, that commanded the only outlet of the western states, would have been suffer- ed, like Texas, to walk through the world alone. Even if our neighbours condescend to tolerate the ireedom of our own choice, how are we to maintain our rank among the nations. Oiu- army (nay smile not, for an army we must have) will decimate itself every month by desertion, unless it may rather vary the monotony of discipline by the periodical Saturnalia of military despotism. Our navy (for a navy also we must have,) besides requiring here and there a hired haven during the winter or lying high and dry more than half of the year, will be man- ned only by the dregs of the fleets of Eng- land and America. Our naval prospects we may perhaps improve by uniting with the Lower Provinces, provided always that their fulness of time may happen to coincide with our own, but even thus we can hardly hope to withstand the constant pressure of our neighbours along a frontier of two thou- sand miles. If, then, we resolve to live and die in oiu* allegiance, we must task our vigilance aj^aiViHl every measure, which, under vvhate\ 1 1 j.f«- texts it may l>e men ', tends to sow discord among us. Kwit band of brothers for maintaining tin* inu y o* Ane entpirc, as the best guarantee ol