+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. | |----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------| | |'29 to '33|'34 to '38|'39 to '43|'44 to '45| Total. | | | | | | | | | |----------|----------|----------|----------|---------| |England. | 43,386 | 28,624 | 30,318 | 16,531 | 119,354 | |Ireland. | 102,264 | 54,898 | 74,981 | 24,201 | 256,344 | |Scotland. | 20,143 | 10,998 | 16,289 | 4,408 | 51,838 | |British American| | | | | | | Prov. &c. | 1,904 | 1,831 | 1,777 | 377 | 5,589 | | |----------+----------+----------+----------+---------| | | 167,697 | 96,351 | 123,860 | 45,517 | 433,425 | +----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+ Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx of population. The increase in the number of its inhabitants, between 1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000. The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although rather scantily, as Mr. Logan can, I dare say, testify, an exploration of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and mineralogy are concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and zoology, will follow; and agriculture, that primary and most noble of all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the formation of district and local societies, which will do infinitely more good than any system of government patronage for the advancement of the welfare of the people could devise. The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the control of the executive and legislative bodies by the formation of a board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the government. But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error was committed in making the President, and consequently all the officers and _employes_, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry of the day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by the fear of dismissal upon any change of the popular will, and neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures mere jobs. This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has created a finer country on the whole earth.