Samuel Thompson

“ It is high carnival with the Quebec gamins, when they can collect there in hundreds, each with his frail handsleigh, and poising themselves on the giddy edge of the "horrent summit," recklessly shoot down in fearful descent, first to the sharp rocky slope, and thence with alarming velocity to the lower level of the street. Outside St. John's Gate is another of these infantile race-grounds. Down the steep incline of the glacis, crowds of children are seen every fine winter's day, sleighing and tobogganing from morning till night, not without occasional accidents of a serious nature. ”

“ I am fully sensible that the United States possesses estimable citizens in great numbers, who feel, and lament more than anybody else, the flagrant abuses of her free institutions. But do they exercise any controlling voice in elections? Do they even hope to influence the popular vote? They tell us themselves that they are powerless. And so—we have only to wish them a fairer prospect; and to pray that Canada may escape the inevitable Nemesis that attends upon great national faults such as theirs. ”

“ Besides the plain, straight-grained timber which we heedlessly burn up to get it out of the way, there are our ornamental woods—our beautiful curled and bird's eye maple, our waved ash, our serviceable butternut or yellow walnut, our comely cherry, and even our exquisite black walnut, all doomed to the same perdition. Little of this waste would occur if once the owners of land knew that a market could be got for their timber. Cheese and butter factories for export, have already spread over the land—why not furniture factories also? ”

“ In winter also, Quebec has many features peculiar to itself. Close beside, and high above the little steep roofed houses—crowded into streets barely wide enough to admit the diminutive French carts without crushing unlucky foot-passengers,—rise massive frowning bastions crowned with huge cannon, all black with age and gloomy with desperate legends of attack and defence. The snow accumulates in these streets to the height of the upper-floor windows, with precipitous steps cut suddenly down to each doorway, so that at night it is a work of no little peril to navigate one's way home. ”

“ I feel sure that the benefit to the people of a reference and lending library of carefully selected books, is undisputed by all who are interested in the mental, moral, and social advancement of our city. The books in such a library should be as general and as fascinating as possible. I would have this library a representative one, with a grand foundation of solid, standard fact literature, with a choice, clear-minded, finely-imaginative superstructure of light reading, and avoid the vulgar, the sensuously sensational, the garbage of the modern press. ”

“ Why not warm ourselves with the coal of Nova Scotia, of Manitoba, and, by-and-by, of the Saskatchewan, and spare our forest treasures for nobler uses? Would not this whole question be a fitting subject for the appointment of a competent parliamentary commission?
To me these reflections are not the birth of to-day, but date from my bush residence in the township of Nottawasaga. If I should succeed now in bringing them effectively before my fellow Canadians ere it is too late, I shall feel that I have neither thought nor written in vain. ”

“ Warm 'neath the snow the saplings hide— Its ice-crust firm pace we. The partridge [5] with expanded crest Struts proudly by his mate; The squirrel trims its glossy vest, Or eats its nut in state. Quick echoes answer, shrill and short, The woodcock's frequent cry; We heed them not—a keener sport We seek—my dog and I. Far in the woods our traps are set In loneliest, thickest glade, Where summer's soil is soft and wet, And dark firs lend their shade. Hurrah! a gallant spoil is here To glad a trapper's sight— The warm-clad marten, sleek and fair, The ermine soft and white ”

“ Sir John once said to myself. "I don't care for office for the sake of money, but for the sake of power, and for the sake of carrying out my own views of what is best for the country." And I believe he spoke sincerely. Mr. Collins, his biographer, has evidently pictured to himself his hero some day taking the lead in the demand for Canadian independence. I trust and think he is mistaken, and that the great Conservative leader would rather die as did his late rival, than quit for a moment the straight path of loyalty to his Sovereign and the Empire. ”

“ In Montreal, during the riots that followed the passage of the Rebellion Losses bill, the troops of cavalry that had been on regular service for over ten years, forgot their discipline, forgot their duty to their Queen's representative, forgot their esprit de corps, and sat on their horses and laughed while the mob were engaged in pelting Lord Elgin with eggs. This Toronto troop acted differently, and established a name then for obedience to orders, that should be looked back to with pride by every man who ever serves in its ranks. ”

“ I was at the same time forcibly impressed with another leading idea—that no where in the Scriptures have we any instance of a divinely regulated government, in which the worship of God did not occupy a chief place. I thought—I still think—that the same beneficent principle which makes Christianity a part of the common law of England, and of all her colonies, including the United States, should extend to the religious instruction of every soul in the community, gentle or simple, and more especially to what are called the off-scourings of society. ”

“ I trust, however, with you, that the crisis is now past, and that the abundant harvest, with which a kind Providence has blessed the country, will ere long restore its commerce to a healthy tone.
The completion of your water communications with the ocean must indeed be watched with a lively interest by all who have at heart the welfare of Canada and the continuance of the connection so happily subsisting between the Province and the Parent State. These great works have undoubtedly been costly, and the occasion of some financial embarrassment while in progress. ”

“ Remembering all this, and that these same people, Canada's earliest settlers, rather than live under a foreign government, though the people of that government were their own countrymen, yea, their very kinsmen and relatives—that they had forsaken their cultivated farms, their lands and possessions, to take up their abode with their families in a wilderness; remembering these circumstances, it need excite no surprise that the old colonial commercial system was allowed to continue without any very weighty remonstrance from the colonists, until it expired in Britain's free trade policy. ”

“ No road approaches within ten miles; no footpath nearer than half that distance; the surveyor's blaze is the sole distinctive mark between the adjoining lots and your own; there are trees innumerable—splendid trees—beech, maple, elm, ash, cherry—above and around you, which, while you are wondering what on earth to do with them, as you see no chance of conveying them to market for sale, you are horrified to hear, must be consumed by fire—yea, burnt ruthlessly to ashes, and scattered over the surface of the earth as "good manure" ”

“ With the adoption of the Free Library system in this city, the usefulness of the Institute as an educator would have passed away. It was better for it to go honourably out of existence, than to die a lingering death, of debt and starvation. During its fifty-three years of existence it had done a good work. Thousands of the young men of this city, by its refining and educating influences, had their thoughts and resolves turned into channels of industry and usefulness, that might otherwise have run in directions far less beneficial to themselves and to society. ”

“ A course of careful observations during the last eleven years has fully satisfied me that, had the violent movements in which I and many others were engaged on both sides of the Niagara proved successful, that success would have deeply injured the people of Canada, whom I then believed I was serving at great risks; that it would have deprived millions, perhaps, of our own countrymen in Europe of a home upon this continent, except upon conditions which, though many hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been constrained to accept them, are of an exceedingly onerous and degrading character. ”

“ This reasoning appeared to me both hypocritical and fraudulent; and I hold that it has proved so, and that for England and Scotland, the day of retribution is already looming in the near future. As righteously might a single shop-keeper build his hopes of profit upon the utter ruin of all his trade competitors, as a single country dare to speculate, as the British free-trader has done, on the destruction of the manufacturing industries of all other nations.
The present troubles in Ireland, are they not the direct fruit of the crushing out of its linen industry? ”

“ Here, with a large open clearing around us, plenty of neighbours, and a sawmill at no great distance, we were able to make our home nearly as comfortable as are the majority of Canadian farm-houses of to-day. We had a neat picket-fenced garden, a large double log barn, a yoke of oxen, and plenty of poultry. The house stood on a handsome rising eminence, and commanded a noble prospect, which included the Georgian Bay, visible at a distance of six miles, and the Christian Islands, twenty miles further north. The land was productive, and the air highly salubrious. ”

“ The union of Upper and Lower Canada is chargeable, no doubt, with a large share of the evils that have crept into our constitutional system. The French Canadian habitans, at the time of the Union, were true scions of the old peasantry of Normandy and Brittany, with which their songs identify them so strikingly. All their ideas of government were ultra-monarchical; their allegiance to the old French Kings had been transferred to the Romish hierarchy and clergy, who, it must be said, looked after their flocks with undying zeal and beneficent care. ”

“ I must own, gentlemen, that I was exceedingly amused the other day, when one of the gentlemen who did me the honour to visit me at Toronto, bearing the invitation of the Common Council and Corporation of the City of Boston, observed to me, with the utmost gravity, that he had been delighted to find, upon entering our Legislative Assembly at Toronto, that there was quite as much liberty of speech there as in any body of the kind he had ever visited. ”

“ One symptom of a nobler spirit has shown itself in England, in the understanding lately suggested, or arrived at, that the missions of any one Protestant Church in the South Sea Islands shall be entirely undisturbed by rival missionaries. This is right; and if right in Polynesia, why not in Great Britain? why not in Canada? Why cultivate half-a-dozen contentious creeds in every new township or village? ”

“ But Upper Canada loyalty had a deep and solid foundation in the patriotism of the U. E. Loyalists, a noble race who had proved by deeds, not words, their attachment to the Crown and government of the mother land. These U. E. Loyalists were the true founders of Upper Canada; and they were forefathers of whom we may be justly proud—themselves 'honouring the father and the mother'—their sovereign and the institutions under which they were born—they did literally obtain the promised reward of that 'first commandment with promise,' viz.: length of days and honour. ”

“ But if we "look on this picture and on that;" if we compare the results of the settlement of educated people and of the labouring classes, the former withering away and leaving no sign behind—the latter growing in numbers and advancing in wealth and position until they fill the whole land, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, that except as leaders and teachers of their companions, gentlefolk of refined tastes and of superior education, have no place in the bush, and should shun it as a wild delusion and a cruel snare. ”

“ Whether the capstone of the social pyramid ought to be king or president, is not material to my argument. On republican principles—and with the French King, Louis Philippe, I hold that the British constitutional monarchy is "the best of all republics"—the true theory of representative institutions must be, that each class of the electors should have a voice in the councils of the country equal to, and no greater than, each of the several classes (or strata) above. ”

“ My house stood on a gravel ridge which stretches from the Carlton station of the Northern Railway to the River Humber, and which must have formed the beach of the antediluvian northern ocean, one hundred and eighty feet above the present lake, and four hundred and thirty above the sea. This gravel ridge plainly marks the Toronto Harbour at the mouth of the Humber, as it existed in those ancient days, before the Niagara River and the Falls had any place on our world's surface. ”

“ Another friend, when a youth, was quail-shooting on the site of the City of Toronto, which was nothing but a rough swampy thicket of cedars and pines mixed with hardwood. Stepping hastily across a rotten pine log, the lad plumped full upon a great fat bear taking its siesta in the shade. Which of the two fled the fastest is not known, but it was probably the animal, judging by my own experience in Sunnidale.
Wolves often disturbed us with their hideous howlings. ”

“ Could I venture to enter the lists against so tremendous a rhetorical athlete as Professor Goldwin Smith, I should say, that his idea of abolishing party government to secure purity of election is an utter fallacy; I should say that the great factor of corruption in Canada has been the adoption of the principle of coalitions. ”