Canada and the Canadians
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Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle >> Canada and the Canadians
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Wherein do the Americans exceed the sons of Britain? In history, in
policy, in poetry, in mathematics, in music, in painting, or in any of
the gifts of the Muses? Are they more renowned in the dreadful art of
war? or in the mild virtues of peace? Is the fame of America a wonder
and a terror to the four quarters of the globe?--We may fearlessly reply
in the negative. The outer barbarian knows the American but as another
kind of Englishman. It will yet take him some centuries to distinguish
between the original and the offspring.
It is, in short, as untenable as an axiom in policy or history, that the
American exceeds the Briton in the development of mind, as it is that
the American exceeds the Briton in the development of the baser
qualities of our nature.
When the insatiate thirst for dollars, dollars, dollars, has subsided,
then the American may justly rear his head as an aspirant for historic
fame. His land has never yet produced a Shakespeare, a Johnson, a
Milton, a Spenser, a Newton, a Bacon, a Locke, a Coke, or a Rennie. The
utmost America has yet achieved is a very faint imitation of the least
renowned of our great writers, Walter Scott.
In diplomacy I deny also the palm. For although India is a case in
point, like as Texas, yet even there we have never first planted a
population with the express purpose of ejecting the lawful government,
but have conquered where conquest was not only hailed by the enslaved
people but was a positive benefit, by the introduction of mild and
equitable laws instead of brutal and bloody despotisms. We have not
snatched from a weak republic, whose principles had been expressly
formed on our own model, that which poverty alone obliged it to
relinquish. If the writer, who appears to be an excellent man and a good
christian, had lived for several years on the borders of the eagerly
desired Canada, I very much doubt whether he would have seen such a
_couleur de rose_ in the transactions of the mighty commonwealth, where
the rulers are the ruled, and where education, intellect, integrity,
innocence, and wealth must all alike bow before the Juggernaut of an
unattainable perfection of equality.
If Bill Johnson, the mail robber and smuggler, is as good as William
Pitt or any other William of superior mind, why then the sooner the
millennium of democracy arrives the better. It is unfortunate for the
present generation--what it will be for the next no man can pretend to
say--that this debasing principle is gaining ground not only in Canada
but in England. A reflecting mind has no objection to the creed that all
men were created equal; but history, sacred and profane, plainly shows
that mind as well as matter is afterwards, for the wisest of purposes,
very differently developed.
Does the meanest white American, the sweeper of Broadway, if there be
such a citizen, believe in this perfection of equality amongst men as a
fundamental axiom of the rights of man? Place a black sweeper of
crossings in juxtaposition, and the question will very soon solve
itself. Why, the free and enlightened citizens will not even permit
their black or coloured brethren to worship their common Creator in the
same pew with themselves--it is horror, it is degradation! And yet
there is a universal outcry about sacred liberty and equality all over
the Union. The angels weep to witness the tricks of men placed in a
little brief authority. Can such a state of things last as that, where
the Irish labourer is treated as an inferior being in the scale of
creation, and the Negro, or the offspring of the Negro and the white, is
branded with the stigma of servile? It cannot--it will not. Either let
democracy assume its true and legitimate features, or let it cease--for
the re-action will be a fearful one, as dread and as horribly diabolical
as that which the folly of the aristocracy of old France brought on that
devoted land.
I have said, and I repeat it, that a residence on the borders of Canada
and the United States for some time will cure a reflecting mind of many
long cherished notions concerning the relative merits of a limited
monarchy and of a crude democracy.
The man who views the border people of the United States with calm
observation will soon come to the conclusion that a state of
government, if it may be so called, where the commonest ruffian asserts
privileges which the most educated and refined mind never dreams of, is
not an enviable order of things.
In the first fury of a war with England, who were the promoters? the mob
on the borders. Who hoped for a new sympathy demonstration, in order to
annex Canada? the people of the Western States, who, far removed from
the possibility of invasion, valiantly resolve to carry fire and sword
among their unoffending brethren.
The intelligence and the wealth of the United States are passive; they
are physically weak, and therefore succumb to the dictation of the rude
masses. And what keeps up this singular action, but the
constantly-recurring elections, the incessant balloting and voting, the
necessity which every man feels hourly of saving his substance or his
life from the devouring rapacity of those who think that all should be
equal!
If the government, acutely sensible that war is an evil which must
cripple its resources, is unwilling to engage in it, both from principle
and from patriotism, it must yield if the mob wills it, or forfeit the
sweets of office and of power. Hence, few men enter upon the cares of
public life in the States now-a-days who are of that frame of mind which
considers personal expediency as worthy of deep reflection. What would
Washington have said to such a system?
The batteries or fortalices of Niagara and of Mississagua have led to a
digression quite unintentional and unforeseen, which must terminate for
the present with a different view from that of the author of the Letters
above-mentioned: and let us hope fervently that the New World has not
yet arrived at such a consummation as that of surpassing the vices and
crimes of the Old, as we are certain it has not yet achieved such a
moral victory as that of outrunning it in the race of scientific or
mechanic fame. England is no more in her dotage than America is in her
nonage. The former, without vanity or want of verity be it spoken, is
as pre-eminent as the latter is honestly and creditably aspiring.
The writer above quoted says their ships sail better, and are manned
with fewer hands. We grant that no nation excels the United States in
ship-building, and that they build vessels expressly for sailing; but
for one English ship lost on the ocean, there are three of the venturous
Americans; for one steam-vessel that explodes, and hurls its hundreds to
destruction, in England or Canada, there are twenty Americans.
In England, the cautious, the slow and the sure plan prevails; in
America, the go-ahead, reckless, dollar-making principle prevails; and
so it is through every other concern of life. A hundred ways of
worshipping the Creator, after the christian form, exist in America,
where half a dozen suffice in England.
Time is money in America; the meals are hurried over, relaxations
necessary to the enjoyment of existence forbidden--and what for? to
make money. To what end? to spend it faster than it is made, and then to
begin again. You have only a faint shadow of the immense wealth realized
in England by that of the merchant or the shopkeeper in the States.
Capital there is constantly in a rapid consumption; and as the people
engaged in the feverish excitement of acquiring it are in the latter
country, from their habits, shortlived, so the opposite fact exhibits
itself in England. There are no Rothschilds, no railway kings in
America. Time and the man will not admit of it. John Jacob Astor is an
exception to this fact.
On landing at Niagara, the difference of climate between it and Toronto
is at once perceived. Here you are on sandy, there on clayey soil. Here
all is heat, there moisture. I tried hard for several seasons to bring
the peach to perfection at Toronto, only thirty-six miles from Niagara,
without success; at Niagara it grows freely, and almost spontaneously,
as well as the quince. The fields and the gardens of Niagara are a
fortnight or more in advance of those of Toronto. Strange that the
passage of the westerly winds across Ontario should make such a
difference!
Niagara is a grand racing-stand, where all the loafers of the
neighbouring republic congregate in the autumn; I was unfortunately
present at the last races, and never desire to repeat my visit at that
season. Blacklegs and whitelegs prevail; and the next morning the course
was strewed with the bodies of drunken vagabonds. It appears to me very
strange that the gentry of the neighbourhood suffer a very small modicum
of ephemeral newspaper notoriety to get the better of their good sense.
The patronage of such a racecourse as that of Niagara, so far from being
an honour, is the reverse. It is too near the frontier to be even
decently respectable; nor is the course itself a good one, for the sand
is too deep. Many a young gentleman of Toronto, who thinks that he
copies the aristocracy of England by patronizing the turf, finds out to
his own loss and sorrow that it would have been much better to have had
his racing qualifications exhibited nearer his own door; and there
cannot possibly be a greater colonial mistake committed than to fancy
that grooms, stable-boys, and blacklegs, are now the advisers and
companions of our juvenile nobility.--That day has passed!
It is very unfortunate that very false ideas exist in some of the
colonies of the manners and customs of high life in England. The
grown-up people often fancy that cold reserve, and an assumption of
great state, indicate high birth and breeding. The younger branches seem
frequently to think that there is no such thing at home as the period of
adolescence; consequently, you often see a pert young master deliver his
unasked opinion and behave before his seniors and superiors as though he
wanted to intimate that he was wiser in his generation than they.
In crossing to Niagara, we had a specimen of the precocious colonist of
1845. The table of the captain of the boat, like that of his respected
father, was good and decorously conducted, and there were several ladies
and some most respectable travelled Americans at dinner. A very young
gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they
had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night
before--champagne, by the by, is thought a very aristocratic drink among
psuedo-great men, although it is common as ditch-water in the United
States--engrossed the whole conversation of the dinner-table, picked his
teeth, took up the room of two, called the waiter fifty times, and ended
by ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and
puddings were removed. The company present rose before the dessert
appeared, thoroughly disgusted; and I afterwards saw this would-be man
peeping into the windows of the ladies'-cabin, and performing a thousand
other antic tricks, cigar in mouth, for which he would in England have
met with his deserts.
The precociousness of Transatlantic children is not confined to the
United States--it is equally and unpleasantly visible in Canada.
The Americans who travel, I can safely say, are not guilty of these
monstrous absurdities. I have crossed the Atlantic more than once with
boys of from seventeen to twenty, who have left college to make the
grand tour, without ever observing any thing to find fault with. The
American youth is observant, and soon discovers that attempting to do
the character of men before his time in the society of English strangers
invariably lowers instead of raising an interest.
There is a good caricature of this in an American book, I forget its
title, written some time ago, to show the simplicity, gullibility, and
vindictivness of our Trollopean travellers. It is a boy of sixteen, or
thereabouts, cigar in the corner of his mouth, hat cocked on three
curls, and all the modern etceteras of a complete youth, saying to his
father, "Here, take my boots, old fellow, and clean them." The father
looks a little amazed, upon which the manikin ejaculates, "Why don't you
take them? what's the use of having a father?"
There will be a railway smash in this, as well as in the locomotive
mania. Republicanism towards elders and parents is unnatural; the child
and the man were not born equal.
I remember reading in a voluminous account of the terrors of the French
revolution a remarkable passage:--servants denounced masters, debtors
denounced creditors, women denounced husbands, children denounced
parents, youth denounced protecting age; gratitude was unknown; a favour
conferred led to the guillotine: but never, never in that awful period,
in that reign of the vilest passions of our nature over reason, was
there one instance, one single instance, of a parent denouncing its
child.
It is not a good sign when extreme youth pretends to have discovered the
true laws of the universe, when the son is wiser than the father, or
when immature reason usurps the functions of the ripened faculties.
I have put this together because I hear hourly parents deprecating the
system of education in the greatest city of Western Canada; because I
hear and see children of fourteen swaggering about the streets with all
the consequence of unfledged men, smoking cigars, frequenting
tavern-bars and billiard-rooms, and no doubt led by such unbridled
license into deeper mysteries and excesses; because I hear clergymen
lament that boys of that age lose their health by excesses too difficult
of belief to fancy true. Surely a salutary check in time may be applied
to such an evil.
But liberty and equality, as I said before, are extending on both sides
of the Atlantic: and in their train come these evils, simply because
liberty and equality are as much misunderstood as real republicanism and
limited monarchy are.
CHAPTER VIII.
The old Canadian Coach--Jonathan and John Bull passengers--"That
Gentleman"--Beautiful River, beautiful drive--Brock's
Monument--Queenston--Bar and Pulpit--Trotting horse Railroad--Awful
accident--The Falls once more--Speculation--Water
privilege--Barbarism--Museum--Loafers--Tulip-trees--Rattlesnakes--The
Burning Spring--Setting fire to Niagara--A charitable Woman--The
Nigger's Parrot--John Bull is a Yankee--Political
Courtship--Lundy's Lane--Heroine--Welland Canal.
I can make no stay at Niagara for the present; but, after resting awhile
at Howard's Inn, which is the most respectable one in the town, proceed
in his coach to Queenston.
The old Canadian coach has not yet quite vanished before modern
improvement. It is a mighty heavy, clumsy conveniency, hung on leather
springs, and looking for all the world as if elephants alone could move
it along; and, if it should upset, like Falstaff, it may ask for levers
to lift it up again.
We had on board the coach an American, of the species Yankee, a thorough
bluff, rosy, herculean, Yorkshire-farmer, and several highly respectable
females.
I will not say Jonathan did not spit before them, for he is to the
manner born; but, although of inferior grade, if there can be such a
thing mentioned respecting a citizen of the United States, and
particularly of "the Empire State," of which he was, to his credit be it
said, he treated the females with that courtesy, rough as it is, which
seems innate with all Americans.
A stormy discussion arose on the part of John Bull, who hated slavery,
disliked spitting, got angry about Brock's monument, and, in short,
looked down with no small share of contempt upon the man of yesterday,
whose ideas of right and wrong were so diametrically opposed to his own,
and who very sententiously expressed them.
John told him that the only thing he had never heard in his travels
through the Northern and Western States--where he had been to look at
the land with a view to purchase, either there or in Canada, as might be
most advisable--the only thing he had never heard was that all the
citizens of the United States were all "gentlemen."
"I guess you didn't hear with both ears, then, for you always must have
remarked that whenever one citizen spoke of another, he said 'that
gentleman.'"
John laughed outright. "No, friend, I never did hear your white
gentlemen call a nigger 'that gentleman;' so, you see, all your folks
ain't equal, and all ain't gentlemen. Here, in Canada, I have heard a
blacky called 'that gentleman;' and, by George, if many more of your
runaway slaves cross the border, they will soon be the only gentlemen in
Canada, for they are getting very impudent and very numerous."
This is, in a measure, true; such troops of escaped negroes are annually
forwarded to Canada by the abolitionists that the Western frontier is
overrun already, and the impudence of these newly free knows no bounds.
But they cordially hate both the Southern slaveholders and the
abolitionists.
Talking of slavery, pray read an account of it from an American of the
Northern States.
* * * * *
"New Orleans, January 26, 1846.
"A man may be no abolitionist--I am not one; he may think but little on
the subject of slavery--it has never troubled me one way or the other:
but let him mark the records of the glorious battles of the Revolution;
let him notice the Eagle of Liberty, and all the emblems of
Independence, Freedom, and the rights of man; let him muse on the
thoughts they awaken, and then behold the actualities of life around
him. Suddenly the sharp rap of an auctioneer's hammer startles him, and
the loud striking of the hour of twelve will divert his attention to the
throng of men around him, and the appearance of three or four men on
raised stands in different parts of the Rotunda, who are calling the
attention of those around him, at the same time unrolling a hand-bill
that the stranger has noticed in the most conspicuous places in the
city, printed in French and English, announcing the sale of a lot of
fine, likely slaves; at the same time, he observes maps of real estates
spread out--everything in fact around him denoting a 'busy mart where
men do congregate,' as it really is.
"The auctioneer, making the most noise, attracts his attention first;
joining the crowd in front of the stand, he observes twelve or fifteen
negroes of all ages and both sexes standing in a line to the left of the
auctioneer; they are comfortably, and some of them neatly dressed,
particularly the women, with their yellow Madras handkerchiefs tied
around their heads, and their bright, showy dresses; but they have a
look that irresistibly causes him to think back for a comparison to the
objects before him, and it seems strange that it should bring to mind
some market or field where he has sometimes seen cattle offered for
sale, whose saddened look seemed to forbode some evil to them; but the
animal look is somewhat redeemed by the smiles and plays of the little
_piccaninies_, who seem to wonder why they are there, with so many men
looking at them.--Now for business.
"'Maria, step up here. There, gentlemen, is a fine, likely wench, aged
twenty-five; she is warranted healthy and sound, with the exception of a
slight lameness in the left leg, which does not damage her at all. Step
down, Maria, and walk.' The woman gets down, and steps off eight or ten
paces, and returns with a slight limp, evidently with some pain, but
doing her best to conceal her defect of gait. The auctioneer is a
Frenchman, and announces everything alternately in French and English.
'Now, gentlemen, what is bid? she is warranted, elle est gurantie, and
sold by a very respectable citizen. 250 dollars, deux cent et cinquante
dollars: why, gentlemen, what do you mean! Get down, Maria, and walk a
little more. 275, deux cent soixante et quinze, 300, trois cents!--go
on, gentlemen--325, trois cents et vingt cinq! once, twice, ah! 350,
trois cents et cinquante: une fois! deux fois! going, gone, for 350
dollars. A great bargain, gentlemen.'
"My attention is called to the opposite side of the room: 'Here,
gentlemen, is a likely little orphan yellow girl, six years old--what is
bid? combien? thirty-five dollars, trente cinq, fifty dollars, cinquante
dollars, thank you.' Finally, she is knocked down at seventy-five
dollars.
"Why, there is a whole family on that other stand; let us see them.
'There, gentlemen, is a fine lot: Willy, aged thirty-five, an expert
boy, a good carpenter, brickmaker, driver, in fact, can do anything, il
sait faire tout. His wife, Betty, is thirty-three, can wash, cook, wait
on the table, and make herself generally useful; also their boy George,
five years old; you will observe, gentlemen, that Betty est enceinte.
Now what is bid for this valuable family?' After a lively competition,
they are bid off at 1,550 dollars, the whole family.
"As I have before remarked, everything is done in French and English;
even the negroes speak both languages. I saw one poor old negro, about
sixty, put up, but withdrawn, as only 270 dollars were bid for him.
While waiting to be sold, they are examined and questioned by the
purchasers. One young girl, about sixteen or eighteen, was being
inspected by an elderly, stern, sharp-eyed, horse-jockey looking man,
who sported his gold chains, diamond pin, ruffles, and cane: 'How old
are you?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'Do you know how to eat?' 'Everybody does
that,' she said sullenly.
"Passing up the Esplanade next morning, (Sunday) I saw some forty or
fifty very fine-looking negroes and negresses, all neatly dressed,
standing on a bench directly in front of a building, which I took to be
a meeting or school house: walking by, a genteel-looking man stepped up
and asked me if I wished to buy a likely boy or girl. Telling him I was
a stranger, and asking for information, he told me it was one of the
slave-markets; that they stood there for examination, and that he had
sold 500,000 dollars worth and sent them off that morning.
"The above facts are some of the singular features (to a Northerner) of
this remarkable place, and I assure you that I 'nothing extenuate, or
set down aught in malice;' but may the time come when even a black man
may say, 'I am a man!'
"NORTHROP."
* * * * *
I once relieved a poor black wretch who was starving in the streets of
Kingston, and told him where to go to get proper advice and protection:
all the thanks I received were that he was sorry he ran away, for he had
been a waiter somewhere in the South, and got a good many dollars by his
situation; whereas, he said, Canada was a poor country, and he had no
hope of thriving in it.
The lower class of negroes in Canada, for there are several classes
among even runaways, are very frequently dissolute, idle, impudent, and
assuming--so difficult is it for poor uneducated human nature to bear a
little freedom.
The coloured people, if they get at all up in the world, assume vast
airs, but there are very many well-conducted people among them. As yet
neither coloured people nor negroes have made much advance in Canada.
John Bull had visited almost every portion of the Northern and Western
States, was a shrewd, observing character, and had come to the
conclusion, which he very plainly expressed, that the state of society
in the Union was not to his taste, that he could procure lands as cheap
and as good for his gold in Canada, and that to Canada he would bring
his old woman and his children.
"For," said he, "in the London or Western districts of Upper Canada, the
land is equal to any in the United States, the climate better, and by
and by it will supply all Europe with grain. Settling there, an
Englishman will not always be put in mind of the inferiority of the
British to the Americans, will not always be told that kings and queens
are childish humbugs, and will not have his work hindered and his mind
poisoned by constant elections and everlasting grasping for office.
"While," says John to Jonathan, "I am in Canada, just as free as you
are; I pay no taxes, or only such as I control myself, and which are
laid out in roads, or for my benefit. I can worship after the manner of
my fathers, without being robbed or burnt out, and I meet no man who
thinks himself a bit better than myself; but, as I shall take care to
settle a good way from republican sympathizers for the sake of my poor
property, I shall always find my neighbours as proud of Queen Victoria
as I be myself."
Jonathan replied that he had no manner of doubt that Miss Victoria was a
real lady, for every female is a lady in the States; the word being
understood only as an equivalent for womankind, and that John might like
petticoat government, but, for his part, he calculated it was better to
be a king one's-self, which every citizen of the enlightened republic
was, and no mistake.
And kings they are, for all power resides there, in the body of which
he was a favourable specimen, but which does not always show its members
in so fair a light.
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