‘England,’ writes Mr. Parkman, ‘imposed by the sword on reluctant Canada the boon of rational and ordered liberty. A happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.’ But it was not till the American Revolution had broken out, and the royalists left the States to found in Canada a strong colony attached to the British Crown, that Canada may be really said to have been a part and parcel of the Empire, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. It was necessary to move many of the French Canadians elsewhere; and those who remained, still for long looked with an unfriendly eye on England and her rule.
OFF WITH THE EMIGRANTS—THE VOYAGE OUT—THE ‘SARNIA’ THE COD-FISHERY.
One Wednesday at the end of April, last year, St. Pancras Railway Station was the scene of a display not often matched even in these demonstrative days. Mr. J. J. Jones, of the Samaritan Mission, had arranged to take out a party of five hundred emigrants to Canada—the first party of the season. The event seemed to create no little excitement in philanthropic circles. The Lord Mayor had promised to be there, but he was detained in the City, possibly in defence of the ancient Corporation of which he has become the champion; but he sent a cordial letter, as did many other distinguished people, to express sympathy and goodwill.
In the absence of the Lord Mayor, the Earl of Shaftesbury, after the emigrants had been got together in a waiting-room, presided at a farewell meeting, which ought to have sent the emigrants in the best of spirits to the new homes they expect to find on the other side of the Atlantic. They would, said his lordship, still be under the reign of our Queen. They would confer a great blessing on the country whither they were going, and they would show what they could do as good citizens in subduing and replenishing the earth, and in spreading over the world the Anglo-Saxon race. He hoped that the young men present would come back to England for wives, and ended with his best wishes for all in the way of a safe voyage and temporal and spiritual good.
The Earl of Carnarvon, who next spoke, had this advantage over the noble chairman, in that he had made a trip to Canada himself. The emigrants, he said, would encounter difficulties. They were not going to a paradise, but they would find that they had a better chance of getting a living in the New World; especially if they avoided bad company and the crowded towns, and got into the country, and underwent a certain preparatory training. As to Canada, it was a country in which a man would succeed who had health and strength and industry, and a good head and a good heart, and the fear of God to teach him that honesty was the best policy.