EDITED BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. NEW SERIES. FEBRUARY 1873. VOL. VII.-No. XXXVIII. DAILY WORK IN A NORTH-WEST DISTRICT.-BY AN INDIAN OFFICIAL 197 PLYMOUTH.-BY RICHARD JOHN KING 209 222 BRAMBLEBERRIES THE ORIGINAL PROPHET.-BY A VISITOR TO SALT LAKE CITY ............ 225 SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS MAKING BETTER OF IT.-BY A. K. H. B. 236 THE PEKING GAZETTE.—BY SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK, K.C.B............. 245 GUNS AND ARMOUR.-BY COMMANDER WM. DAWSON, R.N. ........ 257 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1873. FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR JANUARY 1873 (SECOND EDITION) CONTAINS ADDRESS DELIVERED ON NOVEMBER 30, IN THE ASSOCIATION HALL, NEW YORK.-BY J. A. FROUDE. NEW EDITION OF THE PASTON LETTERS.-BY L. TOULMIN SMITH. -- A VISIT TO SHAMYL'S COUNTRY IN THE AUTUMN OF 1870. — Bi EDWIN RANSOM, F.R.G.S. SOME CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM. THORWALDSEN IN COPENHAGEN AND IN ROME.-By J. B. ATKINSON. OF ALIENATION.-By A. K. H. B. BRAMBLEBERRIES. SHAFTESBURY'S CHARACTERISTICS.--BY LESLIE STEPHEN. A SKETCH OF M. THIERS. ON PRISONS.-BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR WALTER CROFTON, C.B. DULWICH COLLEGE. HEREDITARY IMPROVEMENT.-BY FRANCIS GALTON, F.R.S. NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS. Correspondents are desired to observe that all Communications must be addressed direct to the Editor. Rejected Contributions cannot be returned. FRASER'S MAGAZINE. FEBRUARY 1873. NOT THE DOMINION OF CANADA. In that moment of national exultation who would have believed that before twenty years were past a large section of the people who were then rejoicing with their king, would be converted into deadly enemies, dragging from his sway the territory they had often helped him to maintain, and that of all his Transatlantic subjects, those foreigners whom he had just acquired would alone remain faithful to him, and even be found a little later fighting side by side with his troops against the aggressions of the new democracy? Yet these events form a natural sequence.1 shores [OT much more than a century ago the greatest and most promising colony ever planted and nurtured by France fell into the possession of Great Britain. Slightly behind us in the race of discovery, in that of acquisition she had surpassed us; and when that final appeal to arms occurred on the plains above Quebec, which history commemorates as a mortal duel between two great commanders, she claimed all the lands watered by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi from their sources to the ocean, and whatever else might lie farther in the unknown west, even to the of the Pacific. On one hazard Montcalm staked an empire, the loss of which was acknowledged by France in 1763, and with it that supremacy in the New World for which the rival powers had so long struggled. The might of England now seemed almost superhuman. Peaceful and prosperous at home, free beyond other countries, honoured and feared by all, the limits of her future greatness depended alone upon her discretion. very Undisputed possession rendered us too confident of our treasures, and arrogant to the inevitable guardians of them. Temptation to stab his old foe, while they helped him to the momentary gratification of revenge, blinded Louis XVI. to the general danger of the principles he was promulgating. Whilst their consequences, his dethronement and murder, the ruin of the kingdom, and the annihilation of religion and order, so shocked the simple Normans of Canada as to make them Yet certain shrewd thinkers predicted nearly what happened. It is said that at the time of the cession the French Minister warned the British Envoy that it would lead to the loss of our colonies, and when the Treaty was fairly signed, Choiseul could not held exclaiming with glee, At last we have got them!' M. de Verguènes, afterwards Minister for Foreign Affairs, then Ambassador at the Porte, also made use to an English traveller of these prophetic words: The consequences of the entire cession of Canada are obvious. I am persuaded England will ere long repent of having removed the only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection. She will call upon them to contribute towards supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will reply by striking off all dependence.'-CREASY, The Constitution of the Britannic Empire,' 144. VOL. VII.-NO. XXXVIII. NEW SERIES. L 2 forswear France and cling to a throne which was treating them with kindness. The story is a curious one. From the time of the great Cartier, who found it, to that of the brave Montcalm, who lost it, Canada was the special offspring of France. She explored it, she peopled it; her missionaries for the propagation of the faith, her voyageurs for the extension of commerce, accomplished journeys which place them amongst the boldest and most enterprising of adventurers. Alone for months, sometimes for years, to expedite the great end they had in view, these fathers would trust themselves amongst the savages, adopting their mode of life, mastering their dialects, enduring their privations, sharing their great fatigues: a career of self-sacrifice which often ended in an untimely death, accompanied by those refinements of torture in which the aboriginal Americans excelled beyond all peoples of the earth, and even prided themselves in exalting to an art. To the untiring efforts and the tact of these good men, France owed to a great degree the permanence and progress of her work, and we are indebted to them for the earliest pictures of that wild northern region, with its wonderful system of waters, and its fathomless forests, and of the life, so rapidly passing away, of its primitive inhabitants. Once only during those times was her domination in peril. It was in the early days of Quebec. England had quarrelled with her about the treatment of the Huguenots. A British squadron sailed up the St. Lawrence, and all French America lay at our mercy. Woife's prototype was Sir David Kirk, who had brought fame with him; Montcalm's was Champlain, the explorer, the administrator, the real founder and the preserver of the new Empire. All the honours of war were granted to the garrison, and Champlain was allowed to return to France. Peace was being discussed when he arrived there, and his dismay and mortification may be conceived when he found the value of La NouvelleFrance so little appreciated by the King and his advisers, that they had failed to make its restitution one of the conditions of a renewal of intercourse. But Champlain was not too late his entreaties and remonstrances prevailed, and the lost colony was restored to its former possessors (1630). To trace the progress and vicissitudes of Canada during the next century and a quarter, an interval full of romance and interest, would require a separate essay; her fortunes under British rule is the task we have set ourselves to consider; we must therefore be content to refer those who are curious to study the times of our predecessors, to the valuable works they have handed down to us, the titles of some of which will be found in the note.2 Immediately after the peace of 1763, Canada, which during the interval between its conquest and formal cession by treaty, had necessarily occupied the position of a military province, was placed under a civil administration. In the same gazette 3 the erection in America of four new governments is announced Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida1 on the mainland, and Gre 2 Relations des Jésuites, now a scarce work, remarkable for its graphic account of the country and the labours of the pioneers. Champlain's Voyages. Charleroix's Histoire et Description de la Nouvelle-France, 1774. De Bacqueville de la Potherie, Histoire de l'Amérique septentrionale, 1722. See also William Smith's History of Canada to the Peace of 1763, published at Quebec, and an excellent abstract of the History of Canada, by John MacMullen, Esq., published at Brockville, Ontario, in 1868. 3 October 8, 1763. During the last two years of the war Spain had been the ally of France. She was punished by the loss of Cuba, which, for the sake of completing our continental posses nada, which comprised the few other West Indian islands we then held5together with the appointment of General Murray as the first Governor of Quebec. A council of eight was nominated to advise him, and his instructions recommended, in most respects, the dispensation adopted in our Crown Colonies as his model. His jurisdiction extended over Canada proper; Nova Scotia, which then comprised what are now New Brunswick and part of Maine, forming a separate province. Too rigid an adherence to precedent led Murray, in one of his early acts, into a grave error. Excepting the garrison, and the immediate servants of the Crown, not a creature then spoke a word of anything but French, and the substitution of English in the Courts of Law caused a natural mistrust amongst all classes. The speedy correction of this false step, and the expressed opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown that neither prudence nor justice warranted an alteration of the system with regard to land and property, which we found in force, or in any of the customs and usages of His Majesty's new subjects, went far to reconcile these to their fate, and to impart a confidence in England of which she soon amply reaped the fruits. Henceforth the Coutume de Paris, originally compiled by Canadian jurists, was to be the authoritative code regulating questions which affected land and inheritance; whilst cases of personal contract and commercial debts were to be determined according to the law of England. An Act of Parliament, in 1774, made several modifications in the machinery of administration. The Council was augmented, its powers were enlarged, but its ordinances to become valid must receive the royal assent within six months of their enactment. The area of the Governor's authority was also expanded so as to include Labrador, and on the west, the countries between the Ohio and the Mississippi. Had it not involved the extension of the Province, or had the lands now added been uninhabited, the 'Quebec Act' might claim almost unreserved praise. But the additional territory contained 20,000 persons of British origin, who instantly raised a cry that their interests were sacrificed, their liberty endangered, and that his new-fangled subjects, who were about to overwhelm them, were dearer to the King than his old and trusty servants. In the House of Lords, Chatham raised his voice unheeded, and the 20,000, with their millions of rich acres, were worse than lost to us for ever. One clause in the Quebec Act, and which, perhaps, more than any part of it secured Canada to our interests, gave to the Romish clergy full exercise of their religion, subject to the King's supremacy, and the power to enjoy the dues and rights accruing to them from the members of their congregations, with a proviso that this concession should not debar his Majesty from making such provision for the support of a Protestant clergy as he should hereafter think fit. The lamentable story of the next nine years, the blunders of Government, and the often tactless attitude of the Opposition, who by the violence of their speech not only confirmed an overwhelmingly powerful Ministry in their stubbornness, but encouraged the more sonable people on the other side of the water in their turbulence, unrea sions, we exchanged for the Floridas. They included, besides the present State of Florida, those portions to the south of latitude 31 of what are now Alabama and Mississippi. The vast and unknown region to the west of the Mississippi was, for the present, left to the Indians, with the intention of purchasing portions of it from them hereafter, when the exigencies of the colonists should lead them to require more space. The Grenadines, Dominica, St. Vincent and Tobago. |