Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of OntarioScadding, Henry
History
Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario
Scadding, Henry
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
"The Banks here tax the people heavily, but they are so stupid they
don't see it. All the specie goes into the Banks. I am told that the
Upper Canada Bank had at one time £300,000 in England in Commissariat
bills of Exchange: their notes in circulation are a million and a
quarter of paper dollars, for all of which they draw interest from the
people, although not obliged to keep six cents in their money-till to
redeem them. All the troops were paid in the depreciated paper of these
fraudulent bankrupt concerns, the directors of which deserve the
Penitentiary: the contracts of the Commissariat are paid in the same
paper as a 10 per cent. shave: and the troops up at Brantford were also
paid in Bank notes which the Bank did not pretend to redeem; and it
would have offended Sir George [Arthur], who has a share in such
speculations (as he had when in VanDieman's Land), had any one asked the
dollars. Sir Allan McNab, who has risen from poverty to be president _de
facto_, solicitor, directors and company of the Gore Bank, ever since
its creation, is said to be terribly embarrassed for want of money. He
is not the alpha and omega of the Bank now. He has quarrelled with his
brother villains. The money paid to Canada from England to uphold troops
to coerce the people helps the Banks."
In the same number of the _Gazette_ published at Rochester we have an
extract from a production by Robert Gourlay himself, who in his old age
paid a final visit of inspection to Canada. In allusion to a portion of
Gourlay's famous work published in 1822, the extract is headed in
_McKenzie's Gazette_ "Robert Gourlay's 'Last Sketch' of Upper Canada."
It is dated at Toronto, May 25th. Having just presented one gloomy view,
we will venture to lower the reader's spirits a particle more, by giving
another. Let allowance be made for the morbid mental condition of the
writer: the contrast offered by the Canada of to-day will afterwards
proportionably exhilarate.
"What did Upper Canada gain," Gourlay asks, "by my banishment; and what
good is now to be seen in it? Cast an eye over the length and breadth of
the land" he cries, "from Malden to Point Fortune, and from the Falls to
Lake Simcoe: then say if a single public work is creditable, or a single
institution as it should be. The Rideau Canal!--what is it but a
monument of England's folly and waste; which can never return a farthing
of interest; or for a single day stay the conquest of the province. The
Welland Canal!--Has it not been from beginning till now a mere struggle
of misery and mismanagement; and from now onward, promising to become a
putrid ditch. The only railway, of ten miles; with half completed; and
half which cannot be completed for want of funds! The macadamised roads,
all in mud; only causing an increase of wear and tear. The province
deeply in debt; confidence uprooted; and banks beleaguered!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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