We had intended changing the title of our papers on the Canadas, and throwing together for the Magazine the results of many years’ experience, and many opportunities of observing the lights and shades of colonial life. Not that we had a new system of settlement to propound, or a new art of colonisation to illustrate. Our purpose was simply to have conducted the reader along the high road of colonial life, and to have pointed out to him, on the way, houses evidencing comfort, respectability, and plenty, farms proving wealth and independence, and barn-yards filled with stock and with grain, belonging to men, who, but a comparatively short time before, had been labouring in Europe without a hope beyond their daily bread, or a prospect beyond that of constantly toiling for others. We had purposed, too, telling the story of how these men rose; and pointing out, in the same great country, thousands upon thousands of openings for others to go and do likewise. Nor did we intend stopping here. There is a large class of men in Great Britain, who, feeling as men, and wishing to discharge the duties of men, cannot look very comfortably around them, and see those who owe their existence to them likely to be left worse off in the world than they were left themselves; yet who cannot, from the peculiar organisation of society in Britain, help themselves; and who are often prevented—through family connexions that bring them no good, and family pride that often sickens much more than it elevates the heart—even from using those exertions and efforts that might better their condition. We purposed pointing out the adaptation of the colonies to such men, and their adaptation to the colonies. But this to us agreeable undertaking—for we believe it might be attended with good—we are obliged for the present to abandon, to consider the state of the colonies with respect to their government and the institutions of England; and to see if we cannot suggest a plan whereby those we might induce to settle in them might not lose the protection, the glory, and the fostering care of their mother country.