when my father settled in our township, there was not a road, or a mill, or a neighbour within ten miles of us.' Most of them went in debt for the little supplies of provisions they wanted, and thought it no hardship to pay the debt afterwards from the produce of their lands. Five dollars worth of flour, and a like value of pork or other food, would be abundance for each individual, taking men, women, and children, until crops would be gathered. Families of five, becoming settlers, ought to consider themselves rich with twenty pounds worth of provisions, tools, and seed. I believe three-fourths of the settlers in the woods in this country, possessed no such sum; and with assistance to that extent the new settlers ought to succeed, and would succeed well." And the learned gentleman in the same lecture, thus addressed his Irish countrymen, urging them to look to emigration to Canada as the means of relieving them from the poverty prevalent in their own unfortunate island: --- few years with his own labour. Many have emigrated, many have come here, but how few in comparison with the multitudes left behind, how few in comparison with the multitudes which this country was capable of receiving. And yet did it require more courage to cross the Atlantic than to become an Irish laborer for hire, more exertion to clear a farm than to work from morning till night, feeding on potatoes at sixpence a-day, more endurance to sit by a blazing wood-fire in a Canadian shanty, thar. to shiver over the stinted hearth of an Irish cabin?—was the certain prospect of abundance in the one case, less cheering than the inscription" hope not," which may well be placed over the door of each Irish peasant ? ་་ "This picture is Irish. I dare not indulge in any portraiture of society in the sister island. If there be no destitution amongst the agriculturists and artizans of England, if the accounts we read an addition of 300,000 souls to the population of of Parish Unions be fables,-if there be not in truth England each year, if the condition of the English labourer be not worse than it was twenty years ago,-if the prospects of the English farmer be as bright as they were twenty years since,-if the Glasgow weavers be a prosperous class, as compared with the Canadian landholders,—if the Highland hills afford abundance to the brave chil dren of the soil,-then all I can say is-happy island! You want no extension of territory, you can afford to conquer colonies, and to give them for nothing to the needy Americans, that they may sell them, that they may found sovereign states upon your inheritance. But if there be destitution and poverty even in England and Scotland,-if the increase of population overstock the labour market,-if the wealth of nations flowing into your country brings no riches to the poor,-if the condition of the great mass of society have anything of a downward tendency,-if fathers look with any uneasiness upon the future prospects of their children,-then how much more applicable to you is my reproach; for you have the means of emigrating, you have the means of settling on land with ease and comfort, you have the opportunity before you of individual independence, and of founding a great transatlantic community, of spreading the constitution, laws, and intelligence of your country over new regions, and you want the spirit, the ambition, the enterprise of the Yankee, whose manners you ridicule, and whose wandering propensities you affect to despise. "You who are Irishmen and who belonged to the middle class of society, who are the sons of small farmers in Ireland, or of small tradesmen in Irish towns and cities, must remember well the narrow economy, the parsimonious housekeeping, which was necessary to make both ends meet. It used to be said of the Kinsale gentry that they had hake and potatoes for dinner one day, and, by way of rarity, potatoes and hake the next. You know with what anxiety parents watched their growing families, feeling them an increasing burden, and wondering where the mass of society would open places in which to introduce the wedge, which was to make their children self-dependent. You have witnessed the struggles to obtain small parcels of land at exorbitant rents, which would leave to the tenantry just sufficient in favorable seasons for subsistence, and hopeless arrearages, should prices be low or crops bad. Have you not had in your neighbourhood, the midnight burning, the hideous murder? Have you not been startled from your slumber by the clank of arms, to look abroad and see the glittering sabres of the soldiery surrounding the unhappy criminals, on their way to captivity and death? What occasioned this? Some higher rent offered for a farm, which made the tenant homeless; some despairing resistance to the fate which was to make the tenant a half-employed laborer, and his family beggars. In this descending course to social perdition, were there not times when the sinking tradesman, the small farmer, could have emigrated, with more abundant means, more manly strength, and more of the habit of enduring privation, than one half the emigrants who have peopled the Western States of America; and more available property to commence a settlement, than one half the Irish emigrant population of Canada, who are now independent free-ture for themselves and their children,--this coun holders? What these people wanted was American ambition; they should not have struggled for what their own country contained. They should have sought for better things abroad. For several years of the period I speak of, namely, from 1816 downwards, land in this country was given free, and at this moment land can be obtained on credit, at prices which an industrious man can pay in a "To the class I have just described, those who have the means of emigrating, and of settling upon land; to those who are still more happy, in the present means of paying for land; to those who can do still better, and choose their new po sition on land already improved, and in the midst of cultivation and population; to all whose condition is not one of present ease, and of hopeful fu try of Canada offers all the inducements to emigration, arising from cheap land, fertile soil, good and healthy climate. If labour be comparatively dear, so much the better for the labourers. If this makes land cheap, so much the better for the settler. If labour were here as cheap as at home, the land which you can now purchase for ten shillings or one pound an acre, would be worth one or two fell upon a large and handsome clearing of one hundred acres, with herds of cattle grazing in the pastures, sheep clustered in the shade under the fences, wheat ripening in the fields, and apples reddening in the orchard-a good log-house, and a better barn and stable, in the midst of all this. Inside the house was a respectable-looking man, his wife and grown-up daughters. Their house was clean, comfortable, and abundant, and we fared well. They had books on the shelves, and one of the girls was reading, others spinning, churning, or knitting. I asked no questions, but knowing that my friend could give me the history of the settler on the road in the morning, I waited. My first exclamation was, 'Well, Chisholm, I do envy you your countrymen! That man must have lived here many years without a neighbour?' Yes,' was the answer, he was the first settler in these parts; and when he came, there was no white man between him and Lake Huron ?' 'He must have been poor, or he would not have come here?' 'Yes,' was the answer, he was very poor.' 'He must have educated his children himself?' 'Yes, there was no school within many pounds an acre in rent, and its selling price would be thirty or forty pounds an acre. How, then, could you become landowners? As the case now stands, those who have capital can employ labourers, and they can do it with profit, because the investment of capital in the price of land, is small. Part only of what you would pay in rent and poor rates, is paid in wages. One hundred acres of land, held in fee simple, is not so profitable as one hundred acres of fee simple property at home; but one hundred pounds worth of land will yield five times the profit of a hundred pounds worth of land at home; and, moreover, every man who works a week for himself, has a tangible or calculable gain. What, I ask you, must be the profit of cultivating land, when, with its produce alone, an industrious man can, by the improvement and cultivation of thirty or forty acres, in a few years, pay the credit price and interest upon two hundred acres, and make the market value of the farm double what it was at first, in the course of operation? If specimens are wanting of what Canada can produce, I ask the intending emigrant to examine the Canadian wheat and flour in the home markets. If speci- miles of him.' 'He could not have employed lameus of what our poor emigrant population can do are wanted, let them inquire of the thousands at home who are benefitted by remittances of money from the poorest of our people, to aid their ⚫ relatives in Ireland, or to assist in bringing them from that land of misfortune and beggary. These are simple, absolute truths, and if truth can cross the sea, why do men remain under circumstances daily becoming worse? Why do they not flee while it is yet time? Why will not love for their children move them, if they are too contented themselves? An Irish emigrant myself, I feel and speak on these subjects warmly; and, addressing, as I now do, an audience of my fellowcitizens of Toronto, chiefly composed of emigrants or their children, in a city which I have seen grow from eight hundred to twenty thousand inhabitants, in the midst of a country prospering by means of emigration, do you wonder that I should feel deeply on this subject, or that I should love the land to which a kind Providence has directed my footsteps." And the following well-told story illustrates, aptly enough, the idea we have endeavoured to give, of what may be done in the woods :"When I look into the books published to guide settlers, I find one of the first inquiries set down is, how much does it cost to build a loghouse? How much will it cost to clear an acre of land? How much will the first crop sell for? A pretty set of settlers they would be, to whom these questions would be of any use. My answer would be,-Go and build a shanty for yourself, clear your acre of land with your own hands, and eat up your first crop, with the aid of your wife and children and the pigs, if you can. bourers?' 'No, all this was the work of his own hands.' 'Then,' again I said, 'I do envy you your countrymen! This is Scotch prudence, Scotch energy, Scotch courage.' 'Well,' said he, it may be all just as Scotch as you like to make it, but after all the man is an Irishman.' I could fill a book, not to, say a lecture, with such anecdotes, but each one of you could do the same. They could be told of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, from north and south; of men with large families, and men alone; of men who began with a little, and men who began with nothing. And, Father of Mercy! is it for such men that poor-houses are built and is it for such that a half a meal of potatoes is a bounty? Are such men to hold out their hands to beg? Are they to see their wives and little ones starving, while the lands of their country, their inheritance, lie vacant and unpeopled? Can three thousand miles of sea, and a three weeks' voyage, make all this difference?" It has been naturally enough a matter of surprise, that the settlement of such vast tracts of available land, as are to be found in Canada, has not occupied more than it has, the attention of the Imperial Government. Public money and public energy is being directed to the transporting of the emigrant, to Australia. Would it not be as well to pay some attention to the settlement of the waste lands of Canada, to take means to disseminate information, as to the country, to provide the means of transport to their destination (not merely to Quebec) of such people as want nothing to make them good settlers, but the "I was one day riding out towards the Owen's means of reaching the lands-to make liberal Sound Settlement, with a gentleman now dead, grants of land on the condition of actual settlethe late William Chisholm, whom we used to call ment, and to encourage the emigration of White Oak, for his truth and honesty of character, and genuine soundness of heart. At the township of Garafraxa, a place with scarcely any inhabitants, after getting over a detestable road, and having been long without seeing a house, we all classes of enterprising men, by showing the poor that they can better their condition, and the wealthy that they can invest their capital with benefit to others and immense advantage to themselves. As Mr. Sullivan observed, "what will be the consequence to us, if no great movement is made to people the British territories in this quarter of the world? The United States have pressed on us in the north-east; they have got to the northward of us in the west. We are advancing slowly, our Government is speaking with complacency of their emigrants being received into the United States, and our public lands are held back from settlement, and kept up for years. Why, the consequence will be that, out-flanked by a powerful population, left without the natural increase and nurture which a wholesome distribution of the people of the empire ought to cause, we must fall at no distant period into dependance on the American Republic. Then, indeed, British subjects will come and settle amongst us, and they will buy the land from strangers, which their forefathers bled to win and to maintain, and England will have the satisfaction of considering that she was very careful in keeping the peace, and very learned, respecting the labour market of America." The space we have left for referring to the other occupations to which emigrants may turn their attention, is small, and this part of the subject can be but glanced at. towns, where but a few years ago there were but huge trees, has been, that new openings have constantly been made for the investment of capital, the pursuit of all kinds of trade, and the employment of numerous artizans. A town containing 30,000 inhabitants now covers a space, which, so recently as the war of 1812, contained but a few small houses, and such a mere handfull of people, that the Yankees were able to capture it. The accumulation of wealth has necessarily enriched those who have had the opportunity of taking part in the business of a place which was rising so rapidly; and the consequence is not surprising, that among its wealthiest inhabitants, we recognize tradesmen who commenced life at the very beginning, as far as capital was concerned, less than twenty years ago. Every town and village in the Province affords a similar example in a greater or less degree; and now that the railway mania has set them all agog, some of the western towns evince an intention of showing, that in a few years they intend Toronto to be scarcely "a circumstance" to them. There is abundant scope for the safe investment of capital and enterprise in all branches of mercantile business, but chiefly in that of In a business point of view, it stands to domestic manufactures. The manufacture of reason, that a country in which real estate Canadian wool, although Mr. Patterson and increases in value, in a manner almost unex- Mr. Gamble have carried off the prizes for ampled in any other part of the world, must blankets, at the Great Exhibition, is but in its afford a fair field for the investment of money. infancy, as far as its extent is concerned. There is very little difficulty in accounting for Those who have entered upon the business the wealth which is now enjoyed by the fami- have shown, that Canada need not be behind lies of the earlier settlers in the Province. hand in the quality of her fabrics, but there is They began by purchasing or obtaining grants much need of an increase in the quantity. To of large blocks of wild land. Those tracts see what we can produce, and to judge therenow contain towns and villages, are intersect- from, and it is the best possible criterion, ed by good roads, and, except in cases where whether it be advisable to embark in any kind the capitalist has held at unreasonable prices, of pursuit in the country, a person who is in filled with thriving settlers. The sons of the doubt, should visit one of our Provincial first owner can now show fat rent rolls, and Exhibitions, and compare what he there sees, plethoric lists of bonds and mortgages. Some with the produce of any other country he has suppose that the increase in the value of these ever heard of, of which the settlement is so lands has been an accident, arising mainly from the fact of the unexpected immigration, which is not now proportionably so rapid as it was a few years back, and that such rises cannot be reckoned upon. This is a mistake. The rise in the value of property was never more rapid than at present, owing to the com- And now most respected reader and most mencement of railway speculation. The fact enterprising publisher, the "old settler" bids is, that the fluctuations in property are now, you good-by for a while. May the shadow of and are likely to be, more rapid than ever. your infant magazine never be less! but let Nor can it be a very bad country for the it win the reward which I never knew to fail investment of money, when the market value judicious Canadian industry and enterprise. of that commodity is from eight to ten per I feel a national pride in showing your " monthcent., and with no difficulty about safe invest-ly as a thorough specimen of Canadian "home It may fall to seven, on the repeal of manufacture," and like the blankets of the the Usury Laws, but it will not be lower than Gamble's and Patterson's, it ought to win the that for many years to come, while so much capital is required for the completion of the numerous public improvements. ments. The consequence of the rapid growth of recent. With sincere national pride, but without a spark of vanity on the subject, we simply defy him, to name any part of the world, so recently reclaimed from wilderness, where such a display of native productions could be got together. honours. Good-day to ye, I say, I shall palaver no more 'bout emigration; but, a few months hence, I may be found, possibly, trudging to that snug shanty where you jollify with your choice spirits, (no offence is meant to the promoters of the Maine Law.) But "shanty " is a strange name for that place where you luxuriate. In my time, a shanty was a place as innocent of chimney, door, window, or floor (save some hewn bass-wood slabs perhaps,) as Paul De Kock's and Reynolds' books are of decency, or common sense. If you would wander in my direction, I could show you a place of the kind, wherein a friend of yours lived near twenty years syne, and that a remnant thereof is still left, proves that elm logs are not bad material for house building. Such a shanty as your's, transplanted to the real backwoods, would gain the reputation of having been built by some rich gentleman, who was able to pay the highest price for flour and pork, and likely to let out some fat contracts in land clearing. By-the-bye, I had some advice to give you about these kind of "jobs," but forgot it; never mind, the loss is small; and as your shanty, seems a snug box for an old man to spend an hour in, and your company somewhat of the funniest, I say yon may expect at one of your "sederunts," to meet with your casual contributor, the "old settler." R. THE CHRONICLES OF DREEPDAILY. No. IV. the health of her ancient admirer, coupled with tittering inquiries as to whether the wedding-day had yet been fixed. In these circumstances, it was not much to be wondered at, that the scandalized dowager should withdraw herself as much as possible from a world which had been turned upside down; or that saving and excepting her periodical visits to the kirk, she was seldom seen beyond the precincts of her mansion. The leading proportion of her time was devoted to antiquarian pursuits, and to the arrangement and cultivation of her museum, on which she set no small store. This said museum, which had been accumulating for upwards of twenty years, was the wonder and pride of the whole country-side. Many opined that there was not its equal or marrow within the boundaries of the three United Kingdoms, not even excepting the host of curiosities in the Glasgow College, about which the student lads of Dreepdaily and its vicinity made such a boast. As my duties made me, in a manner, a member of her ladyship's establishment, I can bear witness that fame had not exaggerated TOUCHING THE SECOND COURTSHIP OF THE DOW- the multiform marvels of her museum. AGER LADY SOUROCKS, AND THE ISSUE THEREOF. It boasted of a specimen of everything rare and anti-deluvian, whether in nature or art. AFTER Lady Sourocks had given the mitten Touching the former, her ladyship's presses to Beau Balderston, as recorded in the preced- (cabinets she called them) and shelves were ing chapter of these most veracious Chronicles, crowded, chock-full, with what might be deshe, to a great extent, sequestrated herself nominated the "stickit" or spoiled handifrom the din and blandishments of society. works of Nature, or productions which she Whether this resolution was come to in con- had fashioned in moments of whim or eccensequence of wounded pride or a damaged tricity. There could be seen cats with two heart, I must leave to the determination of tails,-sheep with three legs,-owls sporting the learned. But, if I might hazard a conjec- bats wings,-and toads covered with feathers, ture, I should say, that, considering the ripe like black-birds. The store of warlike weasenectitude (as Mr. Paumy hath it) of the pons, of the olden time, might have armed a dame, Cupid had little to say in the matter. whole regiment, and the ancient coins providThe truth is, that the notions of equality im-ed them with a day's pay in advance. ported from France, along with lace and fancy Then as to books, you would have been soaps, had worked an unwholesome change ready to make affidavit, that their owner had upon the manners of the rising generation of got the plundering of some of the convents or Dreepdaily, prompting them to dispense with monasteries in the days of the Reformation! the respect which they had been wont to pay The very smell of them, as Dr. Scougall often to the gentry. Time was, when the appear-used to observe, was enough to inoculate an ance of her ladyship on the Main Street, was ignoramus with learning! I much question the signal for a universal dropping of curtseys and doffing of Kilmarnock bonnets. Now, however, she could hardly show face, without being greeted with jeering interrogations about whethor the Moderator of the General Assembly, who composed his sermons in Hebrew, and wrote his dinner invitations in Greek, had read even the title-page of a tithe of them. Indeed, for that matter, her ladyship used often to boast, when in a bragging mood, that the majority of them were eunuchs,* by which she meant, so far as I could gather or expiscate, that no duplicates of them had escaped the destructionfull claws of Time! "She has a routh o' auld nick-nackets; And parritch-pats and, and auld saut-backets, Of Eve's first fire she had a cinder; Auld Tubal Cain's fire-shool and fender." It is an old saying, that the longer a greedy man drinks, the thirstier he grows; and in like manner, her ladyship's itch for the acquis ition of the rare and wonderful, increased in equal ratio with the replenishment of her cabinets. Never did she lose an opportunity of becoming the possessor of everything that was mouldy, worm-eaten, or useless, provided only that it was uncommon. She was a constant attendant at the auctions for twenty miles To give anything like a list of these literary rarities, is altogether out of the question, because, even if I could manage to transcribe the heathenish names thereof, I verily believe that the catalogue would more than fill all the spare paper in the burgh! I may mention, however, that the most remarkable item of the lot was a tall Bible, bound in timber boards, imprinted in Latin, or some such barbarous tongue, by that notorious magician round, at which, instead of inspecting the and serf of Satan, Dr. Johann Faustus. Some napery and furniture, like other sensible folk, of the larger letters thereon were stamped she was always to be seen prying and pouterwith blood, instead of orthodox ink, —a fact to ing amongst bunches of old ballads, and such the verity of which I can depose, seeing that I like unprofitable trash. Every gang of tink had ocular demonstration of the same. Never ers which passed through Dreepdaily, visited could I look upon that grewsome memorial of "the mansion," with queer-shaped ram'snecromancy without shuddering, and marvel- horns, for which they always found a ready ling at the lengths to which a thirst after for- market; and many an honest, sterling sixbidden knowledge will carry the wayward pence has she paid away to Hosea Twist, the children of Adam! Many serious folk were of tobacconist, in the purchase of moulded faropinion that it ill became a professing Christ- things and superannuated groats. Hosea ian to keep such a monument of iniquity knew his customer's weak side, and generally within her dwelling, and worthy Mr. Whiggie's contrived to take a liberal measure of her Elders used to hold it up, and with justice, as foot. a matter of reproach against the Establish- At the cycle which I am now recording, ment, that the Kirk Session did not interfere Mr. Gideon Mucklekyte was the incumbent of and put an end to the scandal! Alas! the the parish of Dreepdaily. Verily and truly good old times of faggots and tar-barrels have he was in more senses than one, a great man long since passed away, never more, I sorely in his day and generation, seeing that he fear, to return! weighed considerably more than nineteen But to revert to the museum. I have ever stone. Beloved reader, if you have ever seen been of opinion that the immortal Robert the effigy of Daniel Lambert in the Eccentric Burns (the bard whose genius made the plough Biography, you will be able to form a pretty as illustrious as a Duke's coronet) must have correct idea of the excellent pastor's bulk and had the collection of Lady Sourocks in view, ponderosity. If his cloth had permitted him when he penned the lines on Captain to exhibit his person for filthy lucre, he would Grose's peregrinations through Scotland, col- unquestionably have realized a mint of money; lecting the antiquities of that kingdom." The for assuredly such a mass of animated tallow following verses could only have been inspired was rarely to be met with. Like the fat by an inspection of the wonders of " the man- Knight of Shakespear, he "larded the lean sion," more by token that the glorious plough- earth as he walked along," and when he man once visited the same, but never had an chanced to stand beside a prize-competing ox opportunity of overhauling the memorabilia at a cattle show, the quadruped, dwindled of the Grose Gatherings:down by the contrast into a puny skeleton! QUERY?-- Unique," P. D. Mr. Thom, the witty minister of Govan, (who may well be termed the Scottish Dean |