It is with pain I am compelled to say, the late spirit of encouraging the monopoly of farms, which, from a narrow short-sighted policy, prevails amongst our landed men at home, and the alarming growth of celibacy amongst the peasantry which is its necessary consequence, to say nothing of the same ruinous increase of celibacy in higher ranks, threaten us with such a decrease of population, as will probably equal that caused by the ravages of those scourges of heaven, the sword, the famine, and the pestilence.
If this selfish policy continues to extend itself, we shall in a few years be so far from being able to send emigrants to America, that we shall be reduced to solicit their return, and that of their posterity, to prevent England's becoming in its turn an uncultivated desart.
But to return to Canada; this large acquisition of people is an invaluable treasure, if managed, as I doubt not it will be, to the best advantage; if they are won by the gentle arts of persuasion, and the gradual progress of knowledge, to adopt so much of our manners as tends to make them happier in themselves, and more useful members of the society to which they belong: if with our language, which they should by every means be induced to learn, they acquire the mild genius of our religion and laws, and that spirit of industry, enterprize, and commerce, to which we owe all our greatness.
Amongst the various causes which concur to render France more populous than England, notwithstanding the disadvantage of a less gentle government, and a religion so very unfavorable to the increase of mankind, the cultivation of vineyards may be reckoned a principal one; as it employs a much greater number of hands than even agriculture itself, which has however infinite advantages in this respect above pasturage, the certain cause of a want of people wherever it prevails above its due proportion.
Our climate denies us the advantages arising from the culture of vines, as well as many others which nature has accorded to France; a consideration which should awaken us from the lethargy into which the avarice of individuals has plunged us, and set us in earnest on improving every advantage we enjoy, in order to secure us by our native strength from so formidable a rival.