Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

“ The slave-holding cavaliers of the South have little in common with the mercantile North; the cultivators and hewers of the western forests are wholly dissimilar from the enterprising traders of the eastern coast; republicanism is not always democracy, and democracy is not always locofocoism; a gentleman is not always a loafer, although certainly a loafer is never a gentleman. A cockney, who never went beyond Margate, or a sea-sick trip to Boulogne, that paradise of prodigals, always fancies that all Americans are Yankees, all clock-makers, all spitters, all below his level. ”

“ Canada does not hate democracy so very totally and unequivocally as my excellent friend, Sir Francis Head, so tersely observed, but Canada repudiates annexation.
That a great portion of the population of this rapidly advancing colony feel a vast pride in imagining themselves about to become ranked among the nations of the world, I entertain not the shadow of a doubt; but that the physical and moral strength of Canada desire immediate separation from England, or annexation to the republic presided over by President Polk, is about as absurd a chimera as that of Gourlay and the spray of Niagara. ”

“ When it begins, and the whip-poor-will joins the concert, one is apt to fancy there is a lament among the feathered kind for some general loss, in the stillness and solemnity of a summer's night, when the leaves of the vast and obscure forest are unruffled, when the river is just murmuring in the distance, and the moon emerging from and re-entering the drifting night-cloud, in a land of the mere remnant of the Indian tribes gone to their eternal rest. ”

“ He buys at once a fine tract of forest, converts it by his money into a fertile farm, builds an excellent house, furnishes it, marries.
Knowing nothing of farming, fond of his dogs and his gun, delighted in a canoe and duck-shooting, absent day after day in the deer-tracks, occasionally killing a wolf or a bear, absorbed in sport, he leaves his farm to the sole care of an industrious man, who receives half the crops. He is cheated at every turn; the man buys with the profits land for himself, and leaves him abruptly. ”

“ To avoid all this, is the reason that England clings to Canada, that Canada must not be sold or given away. Canada is in short the important State which holds the balance of power on the North American Continent; and, when her Eagle is strong enough to fly alone, it will not be either from having false wings, or without the previous nursing and tender care of her European mother, who will launch her safely from the pinnacle of glory into the clear sky of powers and principalities. ”

“ They see nothing of the labours of the seven months' winter, of the aguish wet autumn, of the uncertain spring, of the tropical summer, of ice, of frost, of musquitoes and black flies, of mud and mire, of swamp and rock, of all the innumerable drawbacks with which the spirit of the settler has to contend, or the very coarse and scanty fare to solace him after his toils of the day. ”

“ At last, the United States, strong enough to play a new game, a much more lofty one than the Tea Tragedy, defies the whole world, issues a decree irrevocable as those famous ones of the Medes and the Persians, and, perhaps, equally to pass into oblivion, that all the New World is to be the property of the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons—all the New World, never mind whether it be Monarchical England's, Imperial Brazil, Republican Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, &c.—all is to be guided by the banner of the Stars and Stripes. ”

“ We reached Buffalo at seven in the evening, after encountering a thunderstorm, which appeared to be very severe towards the shores of the American side of Lake Erie.
Such a mob as poured on board the vessel, after she had with much difficulty threaded the inconvenient, narrow, muddy creek on which Buffalo is located, I never beheld before: blacks and whites, browns and yellows, cabmen and carters, porters and tavern-scouts, pickpockets and free and enlightened citizens. ”

“ After passing this bridge, and a slough of despond beyond it, we again plunged into the woods, and, mounting over boulders, sinking into bog-holes, and fairly jolted to jelly, on a sudden turned into an open space of near a hundred acres, round which the solemn and stately forest kept eternal guard. Here, in the space of ten or twelve years, our pioneer friends had laboured through weal and through woe, through Siberian winters and West Indian summers, through ague and fever, to create a little modern paradise. ”

“ The world, it is to be feared, will yet see two nations, the most free in the world, speaking the same tongue, educated from the same sources, embruing their hands in each other's blood, to build up a new universal system, impossible in its very nature, or to support that which the experience of ages has perfected, and which three estates so continually watch over each other to guard. ”

“ That there is at present but little prospect for American dominion taking root in Canada, is evident to every person well acquainted with the country, although dislike to British rule and "the baneful domination" is also obvious enough among a large class of inhabitants, who are swayed by a small portion of the press, and by disappointed speculators in politics—men who have lost high offices, for which they were never fitted, either by capacity or connection with the best interests of the people, and who allied themselves to the French Canadian party merely to accomplish their own ends. ”

“ The Americans have just discovered that they have a prior claim to Oregon, and therefore must be an older nation than the British, the separation being a mere trifle, and the sway of England over the thirteen colonies and her ancient settlement of America a dream; ergo, the American language is the primitive tongue. A very excellent worthy gentleman of New York wrote to a friend in Kingston lately, stating that he was sorry that England was going to such an expense in fortifying that town, as it and all Canada would soon be American, and then the money thrown away would be missed. ”

“ We must dare our destiny. We can do this, and can only do it by early measures which shall effect the abolition of slavery, without precipitancy, without oppression, without injustice to slaveholders, without civil war, with the consent of mankind, and the approbation of Heaven. The restoration of the right of suffrage to free men is the first act, and will draw after it in due time the sublime catastrophe of emancipation. ”

“ Nothing can, by any possibility, be more eminently absurd than the police of Kingston as at present constituted. These men are dressed like officers in the army; and, instead of being in the streets to prevent accident or crime, are employed, as they say, hard at work, detecting the latter. How they do now and then, at intervals few and far between, succeed in detecting an unhappy loafer is a mystery to everybody, for they are usually observed on the steps of the Town Hall, or carrying home provisions from the market, with a fine dog following them, or else jaunting about in cabs or sleighs. ”

“ The refugees, or whatever the American border-settlers or adventurers in Canada may be called, are invariably insolent, vulgar, and unbearable in their manners; whilst, away from the frontier, in the United States, the traveller observes no ostentatious display of Republicanism, no vulgar insolence to strangers, unless it be in the bar-room of some wayside tavern, where one is sometimes obliged, as elsewhere, to rest awhile, and where the frequenters may be expected to be not either polite or polished. ”

“ It was somewhat melancholy, on reaching Healy's Falls, which are turbulent rapids of the most picturesque character, with an immense timber-slide, or broad wooden sloping canal alongside of them, to see the clearance in this far solitude formed by the workmen. They had built houses, shanties, and sheds, and had lived and loved together for many a month, with their families, on this charming spot. ”

“ The public works, the great high road to London, and the opening of the navigation of the Grand River, have greatly enhanced the value of their property, whilst at the same time it has brought dangers with those conscienceless adventurers from the bordering States, and from the reckless turbulent Irish canal men, who keep the country in constant excitement, and who, owing no allegiance to Britain or to the American Union, cross over from the States to Canada, or vice versa, as work or whim dictates, carrying uneasiness and dismay wherever they go. ”

“ He is neither so powerless, nor so utterly contemptible as is supposed. In the wilds of the West, it is said, including the roaming horsemen of Mexico, 100,000 warriors exist. Even against 20,000, what army entangled in the forest, hidden in the Prairie grass, lost in the wilderness defiles of the vast Andes of the north, could also exist? and can the American government afford to detach regular troops for such a dreadful warfare? will the militia undertake it? Can an American fleet of sufficient power and resources be kept in the Pacific to counteract and send supplies? ”

“ The mass in Canada is soundly British; and, having weighed the relative advantages and disadvantages of British principles and laws with those of the United States, the beam of the latter has mounted into the thin air of Mr. Gourlay's vision. The greatest absurdity at present discoverable is in the ideas of unfortunate individuals, who imagine themselves placed near the pivot desired by the philosopher, and that they possess the lever which is to move the solid globe to any position into which it may suit them to upheave it. ”

“ Backwoods and backwoodsmen are novelties which amuse for the moment. A backwoodsman, who never worked at a farm, although he may be much in the habit of seeing farmers, has not always just conceptions. He must not live in a village newly made, but actually reside in a log-hut, just erecting, to know what life in the Bush is. Gentlemen and lady travellers are the worst judges possible, because, even if they go and visit their friends, the best foot is always put foremost to receive them, and vanity or love induces every sacrifice to make them comfortable. ”

“ I should most strongly advise him to ponder deeply, after wading through Division, District, and Queen's Bench, through judges without a wig and gown to judges in full paraphernalia, and barristers and attorneys without end, before he encounters a Master in Chancery. It may be such a lesson as he will never forget, for Canada is rather a litigious country—it is too near the States to be otherwise, and lawyers, as well as all other trades and professions, must live. Young settler, stick to your farm, get a clear title to your land, and never get into debt. ”

“ The Canadians at heart are sound, and nowhere is this soundness more apparent than in the western district. It is not the mere name of liberty which can tempt thinking men to abandon the reality.
It has fallen to my lot to be acquainted with many leaders of faction, both in the Old and in the New World, and I never yet knew one whose personal ambition or whose private hatred had not stimulated him to endeavour to overturn all order, all rule. The patriot, whose sole aim is to amend and not to destroy, is now-a-days a rara avis, particularly if he is needy. ”

“ Canada is a burthen rather than a mine of wealth to England, which has flourished a thousand-fold more since Washington was the first president, than she ever did with the thirteen colonies of the West. ”