Meanwhile the small force of British troops stationed in Canada was reinforced by the speedy dispatch of some picked regiments from England, which did not raise it much beyond its regular strength, and tardy steps were taken to organise an efficient militia in the province. The volunteer movement had extended its influence across the ocean, and a commendable activity all over the British Colonies and Canada falsified the complacent statements of the American papers that the people were not loyal to the Crown nor careful of the connection, which, it was alleged, they would gladly substitute for the protection of the standard of the Northern Republic. All these necessary precautions against the consequences of the refusal of the American Government to yield the passengers taken from under our flag, were watched angrily and jealously in the States. The British reinforcements were ridiculed; their tedious passages, their cheerless marches, were jeeringly chronicled. Whole ships were reported to have gone down with living cargoes. Those who landed were represented as being borne on sleighs by sufferance routes, which would be impracticable in war. The Canadians were abused--and so were the Provincialists. The volunteers were assailed with the weapons which the American press knows so well how to use. But that was false policy. It gave a stimulus to the loyal feeling of the subjects of the Crown. The Canadian press retorted, and, exulting in the triumph of the Home Government over the Republican Administration, uttered the taunts which Americans least brook to hear. It was assumed that the task of vengeance and conquest would be light. I received letters in which it was maintained that Canada could not be defended, and that she was not worth defending; others merely urged that if the Canadians would not take a prominent part in aid of imperial measures for their protection, they must be handed over to the invading Americans; that their country cost more than it was worth, and that it was a mistake to keep any connection with the wrong side of the ledger, no matter what the results of rupturing it might be. Americans told me “General Scott declares the Canadian frontier is not capable of defence.” True, Americans had told me some months ago that General Scott, now _mis en retraite_ in New York, after a hasty return from Europe--not, as was asserted, with diplomatic authority or with the view of invading Canada, but to save his pension in case of foreign war--would be in Richmond about July 22nd or 24th, 1861. I heard some views of the same kind from our own officers, who expressed doubts respecting the possibility of a successful resistance to American invasion.