LITMIR.BIZ

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things considered, I think that a great deal of forbearance and good feeling has been shown by the colonists under this trial. Nothing can exceed the devotion of the nuns and Roman Catholic priests, and the conduct of the clergy and of many of the laity of other denominations has been most exemplary. Many lives have been sacrificed in attendance on the sick and administering to their temporal and spiritual need. But the aspect of affairs is becoming more and more alarming. The panic which prevails in Montreal and Quebec is beginning to manifest itself in the Upper Province, and farmers are unwilling to hire even the healthy immigrants, because it appears that since the warm weather set in, typhus has broken out in many cases among those who were taken into service at the commencement of the season, as being perfectly free from disease. I think it most important that the Home Government should do all in their power by enforcing the provisions of the Passengers' Act, and by causing these facts to be widely circulated, to stem this tide of misery.

      * * * * *

      What is to be done? Private charity is exhausted. In a country where pauperism as a normal condition of society is unknown, you have not local rates for the relief of destitution to fall back upon. Humanity and prudence alike forbid that they should be left to perish in the streets. The exigency of the case can manifestly be met only by an expenditure of public funds.

      [Sidenote: The charge should be borne by the mother-country.]

      But by whom is this charge to be borne? You urge, that when the first pressure is past, the province will derive, in various ways, advantage from this immigration—that the provincial administration, who prescribe the measures of relief, have means, which the Imperial authorities have not, of checking extravagance and waste; and you conclude that their constituents ought to be saddled with at least a portion of the expense. I readily admit the justice of the latter branch of this argument, but I am disposed to question the force of the former. The benefit which the province will derive from this year's immigration is, at best, problematical; and it is certain that they who are to profit by it would willingly have renounced it, whatever it may be, on condition of being relieved from the evils by which it has been attended. Of the gross number of immigrants who have reached the province, many are already mouldering in their graves. Among the survivors there are widows and orphans, and aged and diseased persons, who will probably be for an indefinite period a burden on Government or private charity. A large proportion of the healthy and prosperous, who have availed themselves of the cheap route of the St. Lawrence, will, I fears find their way to the Western States, where land is procurable on more advantageous terms than in Canada. To refer, therefore, to the 82,000 immigrants who have passed into the States through New York, and been absorbed there without cost to the mother-country, and to contrast this circumstance with the heavy expense which has attended the admission of a smaller number into Canada, is hardly just. In the first place, of the 82,000 who went to New York, a much smaller proportion were sickly or destitute; and, besides, by the laws of the state, ship-owners importing immigrants are required to enter into bonds, which are forfeited when any of the latter become chargeable on the public. These, and other precautions yet more stringent, were enforced so soon as the character of this year's immigration was ascertained, and they had the effect of turning towards this quarter the tide of suffering which was setting in that direction. Even now, immigrants attempting to cross the frontier from Canada are sent back, if they are either sickly or paupers. On the whole, I fear that a comparison between the condition of this province and that of the states of the neighbouring republic, as affected by this year's immigration, would be by no means satisfactory or provocative of dutiful and affectionate feelings towards the mother-country on the part of the colonists. It is a case in which, on every account, I think the Imperial Government is bound to act liberally.

      [Sidenote: Lord Palmerston's tenants.]

      Month after month, the tide of misery flowed on, each wave sweeping deeper into the heart of the province, and carrying off fresh victims of their own benevolence. Unfortunately, just as navigation closed for the season, a vessel arrived full of emigrants from Lord Palmerston's Irish estates. They appear to have been rather a favourable specimen of their class; but they came late, and they came from one of Her Majesty's Ministers, and their coming was taken as a sign that England and England's rulers, in their selfish desire to be rid of their starving and helpless poor, cared nothing for the calamities they were inflicting on the colony. Writing on November 12, Lord Elgin says:—

      Fever cases among leading persons in the community here still continue to excite much comment and alarm. This day the Mayor of Montreal died—a very estimable man, who did much for the immigrants, and to whose firmness and philanthropy we chiefly owe it, that the immigrant sheds here were not tossed into the river by the people of the town during the summer. He has fallen a victim to his zeal on behalf of the poor plague-stricken strangers, having died of ship-fever caught at the sheds. Colonel Calvert is lying dangerously ill at Quebec, his life despaired of.

      Meanwhile, great indignation is aroused by the arrival of vessels from Ireland, with additional cargoes of immigrants, some in a very sickly state, after our Quarantine Station is shut up for the season. Unfortunately the last arrived brings out Lord Palmerston's tenants. I send the commentaries on this contained in this day's newspapers.[6]

      [Sidenote: The flood subsides.]

      From this time, however, the waters began to subside. The Irish famine had worked its own sad cure. In compliance with the urgent representations of the Governor, the mother-country took upon herself all the expenses that had been incurred by the colony on behalf of the immigrants of 1847; and improved regulations respecting emigration offer ground for hope that the fair stream, which ought to be full of life and health both to the colony and to the parent state, will not again be choked and polluted, and its plague-stricken waters turned into blood.

      [Sidenote: Visit to Upper Canada.]

      In the autumn of this year Lord Elgin paid his first visit to Upper Canada, meeting everywhere with a reception which he felt to be 'most gratifying and 'ncouraging;' and keenly enjoying both the natural beauties of the country and the tokens of its prosperity which met his view. From Niagara he wrote to Mr. Cumming Bruce:—

      [Sidenote: Niagara.]

      I write with the roar of the Niagara Falls in my ears. We have come here for a few days' rest, and that I may get rid of a bad cold in the presence of this most stupendous of all the works of nature. It is hopeless to attempt to describe what so many have been describing; but the effect, I think, surpassed my expectations. The day was waning when we arrived, and a turn of the road brought us all at once in face of the mass of water forming the American Fall, and throwing itself over the brink into the abyss. Then another turn and we were in presence of the British Fall, over which a still greater volume of water seems to be precipitated, and in the midst of which a white cloud of spray was soaring till it rose far above the summit of the ledge and was dispersed by the wind. This day we walked as far as the Table Rock which overhangs one side of the Horse-shoe Fall, and made a closer acquaintance with it; but intimacy serves rather to heighten than to diminish the effect produced on the eye and the ear by this wonderful phenomenon.

      The following to Lord Grey is of the same date:—

      Our tour has been thus far prosperous in all respects except weather, which has been by no means favourable. I attended a great Agricultural Meeting at Hamilton last week, and had an opportunity of expressing my sentiments at a dinner, in the presence of six or seven hundred substantial Upper Canada yeomen—a body of men not easily to be matched.

      It is indeed a glorious country, and after passing, as I have done within the last fortnight, from the citadel of Quebec to the Falls of Niagara, rubbing shoulders the while with its free and perfectly independent inhabitants, one begins to doubt whether it be possible to acquire a sufficient knowledge of man or nature, or to obtain an insight into the future of nations, without visiting America.

      A portion of the speech to which he refers in the foregoing letter may be here given, as a specimen of his occasional addresses, which were very numerous; for though the main purposes of his life were such as 'wrote themselves in action not in word,' he regarded his faculty of ready and effective speaking as an engine which it was his duty to use, whenever occasion arose, for the purpose of conciliating or instructing.

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