Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]Weld, Isaac
History
Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]
Weld, Isaac
Canada -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; United States -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
There are no animosities in Canada about religion, and people of all
persuasions are on a perfect equality with each other, except, indeed,
it be the protestant dissenters, who may happen to live on lands that
were subject to tithes under the French government; they have to pay
tithes to the English episcopalian clergy; but there is not a dissenter
living on tithe lands, perhaps, in the whole province. The lands granted
since the conquest are not liable to tithes. The English episcopalian
clergy are provided for by the crown out of the waste lands; and all
dissenters have simply to pay their own clergy.
There are no game laws in Canada, nor any excise laws whatsoever.
As for the observation made by Mr. Cooper in respect to the military, it
is almost too futile to deserve notice. If a soldier, however, be an
object of terror, the timid man will not find himself at ease in the
United States any more than in England, as he will meet with soldiers in
New York, on Governor’s Island, at Mifflin Fort near Philadelphia, at
the forts on the North River, at Niagara, at Detroit, and at Oswego, &c.
on the lakes, and all through the western country, at the different
posts which were established by General Wayne.
In every other respect, what Mr. Cooper has said of the United States
holds good with regard to Canada; nay more, it must certainly in
addition be allowed by every unprejudiced person that has been in both
countries, that morality and good order are much more conspicuous
amongst the Canadians of every description, than the people of the
States; drunkenness is undoubtedly much less common amongst them, as is
gambling, and also quarrels.
[Sidenote: OBSERVATIONS.]
But independent of these inducements to settle in Canada, there is still
another circumstance which ought to weigh greatly with every British
emigrant, according to the opinion even of Mr. Cooper himself. After
advising his friends “to go where land is cheap and fertile, and where
it is in a progress of improvement,” he recommends them “to go
somewhere, if possible, _in the neighbourhood of a few English_, whose
society, even in America, is interesting to an English settler, who
cannot entirely relinquish the _memoria temporis acti_;” that is, as he
particularly mentions in another passage, “he will find their manners
and conversation far more agreeable than those of the Americans,” and
from being chiefly in their company, he will not be so often tormented
with the painful reflection, that he has not only left, but absolutely
renounced his native country, and the men whom he once held dear above
all others, and united himself, in their stead, with people whose vain
boasts and ignorant assertions, however harsh and grating they may sound
to his ears, he must listen to without murmuring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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