William Alexander Foster

“ We cannot construct politicians, nor manufacture political parties impromptu, for there is always an inert mass, incapable of sudden emotion, subject merely to that oscillation which gives victory or defeat. One might as well try to form a political party from persons of a peculiar physiognomy, as to fit men into sets of political principles. They must come together naturally or not at all, for men cannot be sized in principles, as if at company drill. ”

“ But Canada is not a country of hereditary estates; nor is there, amongst our people, the slightest tendency to make it so. Consequently, if our leading men, instead of being knighted, are made baronets, there will be some risk of our having baronets sinking into the poorer classes of society, and trailing their escutcheons in the dust. Even in England, in spite of primogeniture and family settlements, there is a considerable number of pauper peers, whose titled indigence often forces them to sponge on the public, or resort to the still lower expedient of marrying money-bags. ”

“ Each stage of this country's progress recounts to us, in all the simplicity of unpremeditated record, sacrifices endured, hardships encountered, and brave deeds done, not amid the applause of an interested and anxious world, nor yet amid the pomp and pride of oft recurring circumstance, but rather in silent, ever-changing strait and myriad-formed danger, when every faculty sprang into earnest, vigorous action, and every sense grew sharp by reason of restless emergency; when civilization grappled with herculean savagery, and man fought with nature ”

“ One journal, the Army and Nary Gazette, said :—"There are upwards of 3,000,000 sturdy colonial Britons there, all told, and they are so dreadfully afraid of the approach of the raw, ragged Fenians that may succeed in forcing the United States cordon, as to be incessantly calling on the mother country for military aid. Every newspaper in the colony is filled with the same doleful appeal for help. Canadians are calling lustily upon England to do for them what, if they had any pluck or spirit, they ought to do for themselves. ”

“ Yet, when peace was made between Britain and the States, those loyalists who had placed their lives and property in peril were left to the tender mercies of the revolutionists, without any stipulation as to their protection, without any security even for their lives. Lord Loughborough spoke truly when in his place in the House of Lords he said : "In ancient or modern history there has not been so shameful a desertion of men who have sacrificed all to their duty and to their reliance upon British faith." ”

“ There is another consideration which somewhat alloys our satisfaction in seeing an English baronetcy conferred on a Canadian. We regard with jealousy on behalf of Canada anything which tends to make her leading men look to another country, even though it be our mother country, for the highest rewards of merit. If Canada is to be a nation, it is time that her sons should begin to look for the highest rewards of lierit here. ”

“ Now we can afford to look back with some degree of complacency, for industry has produced abundant fruit, and we are reaping in joy a harvest sown in tears and trouble. As farm after farm was rescued from native wildness, schemes of internal improvement, first viewed as shadowy impossibilities, grew into reality, while the bounteous yield of a virgin soil sent new life into every artery of trade. ”

“ Coming down to more modern times, we can appease our hunger for criticism and satisfy our thirst for notice, to the fullest extent, from books of travel, as well as from the periodical press. Dr. John Howison, a Scotch traveller, tells the world of a people (meaning ourselves) " who are the untutored incorrigible beings that they were when, the ruffian remnant of a disbanded regiment or outlawed refuse of some European nation, they sought refuge in the wilds of Upper Canada, aware that they would neither find the means of sustenance, nor be countenanced in any civilized country." ”

“ Though thus basely deserted; though exhausted by continual marching and incessant fighting ; though their dwellings were falling to ruin and their fields lay waste; though their wives and children were crying for bread ; the despised and forsaken French Canadians neither flung aside their allegiance nor forgot their honour, but plunged into the final struggle with a devotion which excites our wonder and admiration. It was of no avail. On the 13th September, 1759, Quebec was taken. One year afterwards the French flag was hauled down and Canada became a part of the British Empire. ”

“ In vain the New Englander made desperate and persistent efforts to win Canada. In spite of repeated invasions, and in the face of large odds, the flag of France kept proudly afloat. A people varying in number, from 25,000 in 1679 to 70,000 in 1761, not only thwarted every attempt at their subjugation by the much more densely populated colonies to the south, but with a little stingily rendered assistance from the parent land held their own against repeated attack by land and sea. ”

“ Young as we are, we are too old to be abused without retort; weak as we may be, we are too strong to be bullied with impunity. What we demand from English writers is fair play ; and should the hour of peril come, we may venture to ask from England, without sinking our self-respect, a quantum of assistance proportioned rightly to the part we play in attack or defence. ”

“ If one's appetite for horrors demands gratification, the needful stimulant may be found in the details of the massacre of Lachine, when 1,400 Iroquois warriors swooped down by night upon a slumbering village, and plied the torch and tomahawk with all the relentlessness of savage hate, showing mercy to neither age nor sex, and reserving only for a sickening butchery, those whom the inexorable flame spared. ”

“ Thus far my object has been to indicate our advancement as a country and as a people, but it may be well to consider whether individual effort has kept pace, in individual results, with combined action and joint progress ; whether the unit has distinguished itself when isolated from the mass ; whether the mind has grown inert by reason of the need to supply mere bodily wants ; whether chopping and digging have blunted sensibilities, and kept in the back-ground the more refined ambitions of the soul ; whether our soil is more fertile than our brains ”

“ At the close of the revolutionary war, twenty-five thousand persons, exiles from the States, sought refuge in Canada. When we call to mind that there was not a tree cut from Ottawa to Kingston, a distance of 150 miles, that Kingston was a village of a few huts, and that around the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie all was a dense wilderness, we can form some idea of the hardships that fell to the lot of those who sacrificed everything but honour, on the shrine of allegiance. ”

“ We have political institutions combining the greatest freedom with the most perfect restraint upon riot, recognizing the rights of the people without begetting distrust or disrespect for lawful authority ”

“ Unless we intend to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water until the end, we should in right earnest set about strengthening the foundations of our identity; unless we are ready to become the laughing stock of the world, we had better not lose sight of the awful possibility of sinking under self-imposed burdens of territory. ”

“ Accident may have brought to the surface of politics a good many who float by reason of the cork-like lightness of their brains; but, on the whole, our public men are as able as those of other countries. Our politicians have certainly carried party strife to the extreme, but it is an axiom that the smaller the pit, the more fiercely do the rats tight. The world would be rather a stupid place if all men thought and acted alike. ”

“ We have coal in Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic; coal at the Saskatchewan, in the heart of the Continent; and coal at Vancouver's Island, on the Pacific. We have mineral wealth as various as our needs, and, in extent, boundless. We have, at our doors, exhaustless fisheries, the richest in the world, furnishing an annual yield estimated at twenty million dollars to the various countries engaged in them, and giving us a nursery for adventurous and hardy seamen. ”

“ The old Norse Mythology, with its Thor hammers and Thor hammerings, appeals to us,—for we are a Northern people,—as the true out-crop of human nature, more manly, more real, than the weak marrow-bones superstition of an effeminate South. ”

“ We find, also, some ground of complaint in that disregard of the tie of kinship and the bond of common allegiance, which leads so many British travellers and writers to lavish their compliments on the United States and their satire on Canada. Time and again comparisons have been made to our prejudice in respect of progress. Time and again have we been lectured on our bubbling and seething loyalty, and charged with an inclination to sponge on the Imperial exchequer. ”

“ No doubt, in creating Colonial baronets care will always be taken to select men so rich as to hold out a fair hope of their transmitting large properties to their descendants. But this will tend to another evil, inasmuch as it will lead the public mind to connect honour with wealth, instead of connecting it with personal merit; and, assuredly, the lesson that wealth is above merit is not exactly the one which commercial Colonies need to learn. ”

“ In the old French times Canada was farmed out to monopolists ; and even when French Canadians here were fighting for their very existence against large odds, Frenchmen in France were writing disparagingly of them, as " a people who multiplied slowly in the woods, who associated with savages, but who furnished no return to the royal exchequer, no soldier to the royal host, no colonial merchandise to the home trader." Brave Canadian officers were slighted and displaced to make room for the indigent yet supercilious favourites of the home authorities ”

“ The charms of novelty and variety are too attractive, even to the idlest and most listless, to render an unbroken harmony either pleasant to the eye or grateful to the ear. Diversities of temper, of understanding, of interest, are necessary to stimulate our love of existence ”

“ Canadian merchants, instead of spending their wealth in the acquisition of the renown which belongs to the founders and benefactors of great national institutions, will hoard it as a means of founding a family, and they will transfer it and themselves as speedily lodestar more potent than a mere community of profit. Temporizing makeshifts may suit a futureless people. ”

“ When the time does come for a renewal of strife,we spin around, in accordance with the immutable laws by which the political world is regulated, and we cannot, if we would, avoid the scrambling, jostling, quarrelling and fighting incident to the enjoyment of free institutions in a free country. ”

“ Sentiment did not blunt the edge of industry, nor suffering give excuse for idleness. Every breathing spell of war gave the husbandman opportunity. The sword and musket were exchanged for the plough and sickle ”

“ Now that we are prosperous and united, vigour- ous and well-to-do; and now that some of the traditions of the past are gradually losing their hold on the imagination of anew generation, that sentiment which so long found an outlet in declamation over the glories of the mother land, will draw a more natural nourishment from native sources. ”

“ In the old times war raged almost continuously, and every man was a soldier. First came the contests with the Iroquois and the Hurons, garnished with sad tales of civilized atrocities and savage vengeance. ”

“ While this continues it is impossible that we should have truly national statesmen or chiefs of commerce and industry thoroughly identified with our interests, present and future, and capable of the patriotic munificence which, it must be owned, nobly distinguishes the wealthy men of the United States. Canadian men will seek to leave their names in the British peerage, not in the statute book of Canada ”

“ Our agricultural product is immense, and capable of indefinite expansion ; and our forests are the envy of the world. We have, or will have shortly, 70,000 sailors, and now have at least 700,000 men between the ages of 20 and 60 available for defensive purposes. As for territory, we have more than half the continent, and elbow- room for a population of 40,000,000. Religious freedom exists here in its most perfect form, and our elaborate system of common schools, colleges and universities gives an equal opportunity to all to achieve distinction. ”

“ So if we take pride in the past there is some excuse for us ; if we hope for the future, we have, at least, some justification. Thanks to Dr. Ryerson, our school children have now the means of acquiring a knowledge of Canadian geography without first searching through every State in the American Union to find the country they live in, and can now learn something of Canadian history without first pumping dry the reservoir of Yankee buncombe. ”

“ The fact of being a dependent, though but in name, does not blunt the edge of harshly worded rebuke. Our cousins across the lines, with all their self-esteem and resources, and strength, smarted under the lash of a foreign press ”