Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Sources
Among this people the progress of emigration has of late years
introduced an English population exhibiting the characteristics with
which we are familiar as those of the most enterprising of every
class of our countrymen. The circumstances of the early colonial
administration excluded the native Canadian from power, and vested all
offices of trust and emolument in the hands of strangers of English
origin. The highest posts in the law were confided to the same class of
persons. The functionaries of the civil government, together with the
officers of the army, composed a kind of privileged class, occupying
the first place in the community, and excluding the higher class of
the natives from society, as well as from the government of their own
country. It was not till within a very few years, as was testified by
persons who had seen much of the country, that this society of civil
and military functionaries ceased to exhibit towards the higher order
of Canadians an exclusiveness of demeanour which was more revolting to
a sensitive and polite people than the monopoly of power and profit.
Nor was this national favouritism discontinued until after repeated
complaints and an angry contest, which had excited passions that
concession could not allay. The races had become enemies ere a tardy
justice was extorted; and even then the Government discovered a mode
of distributing its patronage among the Canadians which was quite as
offensive to that people as their previous exclusion:
It was not long after the conquest that another and larger class of
English settlers began to enter the province. English capital was
attracted to Canada by the vast quantity and valuable nature of the
exportable produce of the country and the great facilities for commerce
presented by the natural means of internal intercourse. The ancient
trade of the country was conducted on a much larger and more profitable
scale, and new branches of industry were explored. The active and
regular habits of the English capitalist drove out of all the more
profitable kinds of industry their inert and careless competitors
of the French race; but in respect of the greater part (almost the
whole) of the commerce and manufactures of the country the English
cannot be said to have encroached on the French, for, in fact, they
created employments and profits which had not previously existed....
The English farmer carried with him the experience and habits of the
most improved agriculture in the world. He settled himself in the
townships bordering on the seigniories, and brought a fresh soil and
improved cultivation to compete with the worn-out and slovenly farm of
the habitant. He often took the very farm which the Canadian settler
had abandoned, and by superior management made that a source of profit
which had only impoverished his predecessor. The ascendency which an
unjust favouritism had contributed to give to the English race in
the government and the legal profession, their own superior energy,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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