Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
Monsieur de Tocqueville was as much prepossesed by his own peculiar
views of the nature of human society as Mrs. Trollope. Extremes meet;
but truth lies usually in the centre. It is found at the bottom of the
well, where it never intrudes itself on general observation.
The Americans have no fixed character as a nation, and how can they?
The slave-holding cavaliers of the South have little in common with
the mercantile North; the cultivators and hewers of the western
forests are wholly dissimilar from the enterprising traders of the
eastern coast; republicanism is not always democracy, and democracy is
not always locofocoism; a gentleman is not always a loafer, although
certainly a loafer is never a gentleman. A cockney, who never went
beyond Margate, or a sea-sick trip to Boulogne, that paradise of
prodigals, always fancies that all Americans are Yankees, all
clock-makers, all spitters, all below his level. He never sees or
converses with American gentlemen, and his inferences are drawn from
cheap editions of miserable travels, the stage, or in the liners in
St. Katherine's Docks, after the company of the cabin has dispersed.
The American educated people are as superior to the American
uneducated as is the case all over Christendom; and John Bull begins
to find that out; for steam has brought very different travellers to
the United States from the bagmen and adventurers, the penny-a-liners,
and the _miserables_ whose travels put pence into their pockets, and
who saw as little of real society in America as the poor Vicar of
Wakefield's family, before they knew Mr. Burchell.
The Americans you meet with in Canada are, with some exceptions,
adventurers of the lowest classes, who, with the dogmatism of
ignorant intolerance, hate monarchy because they were taught from
infancy that it was naught. Such are the people who lock up their
pumps; but they are not all alike. There are many, many, very
different, who have emigrated to Canada, because they dislike mob
influence, because they live unmolested and without taxation, and
because they are not liable every moment to agrarian aggression.
In this part of the Canadas, the runaway slaves from the Southern
States are very numerous.
There is an excellent covered bridge over the Grand River at
Brantford; and, on crossing this in the waggon, we saw a good-hearted
Irishman do what Mr. Bradley refused to do, that is, give drink to a
wayfarer. This wayfarer resembled the Red Coat that Mr. Bradley hated
so in one particular--he had his armour on. It was a huge mud turtle,
which had most inadvertently attempted to cross the road from the
river into the low grounds, and a waggon had gone over it; but the
armour was proof, and it was only frightened. So the old Irish
labourer, after examining the great curiosity at all points, took it
up carefully and restored it to the element it so greatly
needed--water. Was he not the Good Samaritan?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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