Canada and the Canadians | Page 7

nature has effectually barred against it. The only thing in the course of a life of more than half a century that has ever puzzled me about it is, that the Catholic clergy should, in so many parts of the world, have lent it a helping hand. The ministers of a creed essentially aristocratic, essentially the pillars of the divine right of kings, have they ever been in earnest about the matter? Perhaps not!
If that giant of modern Ireland, the pacificator citizen king, succeeded in separating the island from Great Britain, would he, on attaining the throne, or the dictatorship, or the presidency, or whatever it might be, for the nonce, desire pure democracy? Je crois que non, because, if he did, he would reign about one clear week afterwards.
Look at the United States, see how each successive president is bowed down before the Moloch altar; he must worship the democratic Baal, if he desires to be elected, or re-elected. It is not the intellect, or the wealth of the Union that rules. Already they seriously canvass in the Empire State perfect equality in worldly substance, and the division of the lands into small portions, sufficient to afford the means of respectable existence to every citizen. It is, perhaps, fortunate that very few of the office-holders have much substance to spare under these circumstances; but, if the President, Vice-President, and the Secretaries of State, are to live upon an acre or two of land for the rest of their lives, Spartan broth will be indeed a rich diet to theirs.
When the sympathizers invaded Canada, in 1838-1839, the lands of the Canadians were thus parcelled out amongst them, as the reward of their extremely patriotic services, but in slices of one hundred, instead of one or two, acres.
But, notwithstanding all this ultra-democracy, there is at present a sufficient counterbalance in the sense of the people, to prevent any very serious consequences; and the Irish, from having had their religion trampled upon, and themselves despised, would be very likely to run counter to native feeling.
If any country in the whole civilized world exhibits the inequality of classes more forcibly than another, it is the country which has lately annexed Texas, and which aims at annexing all the New World.
There is a more marked line drawn between wealth and pretension on the one hand, poverty and impertinent assumption on the other, than in the dominions of the Czar. Birth, place, power, are all duly honoured, and that sometimes to a degree which would astonish a British nobleman, accustomed all his life to high society. I remember once travelling in a canal boat, the most abominable of all conveyances, resembling Noah's ark in more particulars than its shape, that I was accosted, in the Northern States too, and near the borders, where equality and liberty reign paramount, by a long slab-sided fellow-passenger, who, I thought, was going to ask me to pay his passage, his appearance was so shabby, with the following questions:
"Where are you from? are you a Livingstone?" I told him, for I like to converse with characters, that I was from Canada. "What's your name?" he asked. I satisfied him. He examined me from head to foot with attention, and, as he was an elderly man, I stood the gaze most valiantly. "Well," he said, "I thought you were a Livingstone; you have got small ears, and small feet and hands, and that, all the world over, is the sign of gentle blood."
He was afterwards very civil; and, upon inquiring of the skipper of the boat who he was, I found that my friend was a man of large fortune, who lived somewhere near Utica, on an estate of his own.
This was before the sympathy troubles, and I can back it with another story or two to amuse the reader.
Some years ago, when it was the fashion in Canada for British officers always to travel in uniform, I went to Buffalo, the great city of Buffalo on lake Erie, in the Thames steamer, commanded by my good friend, Captain Van Allen, and the first British Canadian steamboat that ever entered that harbour. We went in gallantly, with the flag flying that "has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." I think the majority of the population must have lined the wharfs to see us come in. They rent the welkin with welcomes, and, among other demonstrations, cast up their caps, and cried with might and main--"Long live George the Third!"--Our gracious monarch had for years before bid this world good night, but that was nothing; the good folks of Buffalo had not perhaps quite forgotten that they were once, long before their city was a city, subjects of King George.
I and another officer in uniform were received with all