laziness, ignorance, prejudice, and gross habits
prevail to such a degree that it would have been better had the land
remained in bush. The bullet strikes as the rifle is pointed, and Canada
has never aimed to secure the best people as settlers. We need
population, has been the cry, get it and never mind of what quality it
is. What is more blamable, our legislature does not even try to secure
settlers who will assimilate. Business called me to a township one
summer where few of the settlers knew a word of English. Is that the way
to build up Canada as British?

Nature has designed Canada as an agricultural country and such it must
remain. It will prosper as its farmers prosper, and languish when they
are not doing well. It follows their welfare should be the first
consideration, and a mistake will be made if the fact is not recognized
when they work under unfavorable conditions.

The farmer in the Old Country can plow every month in the year and his
flocks and herds only need supplementary rations to keep them in
condition. How different it is here, where winter locks the soil in iron
bonds half the year and animals must be fed from October to May. What
our farmers raise in six months is consumed in the other six, so that
their labor half the year is to store up food for the other half. The
result is, that the earnings of our farmers are less than half of what
they would be had we England's climate. The public man who argues that
because the Old Country farmer can pay heavy rent to his landlord, bear
the burden of severe taxation, and yet make a living, the Canadian
farmer should be able to do likewise, shuts his eyes to the kind of
winter he has to fight against. That winter cuts his earnings more than
half, for, during the months the land is frozen he is unable to do any
kind of profitable farm work, indeed has spells of enforced idleness.
The Old Country farmer can keep hired help the year round, for he has
employment for them; the Canadian farmer needs extra hands only during
summer. The result is that his margin of profits is so narrow that he
can never pay such taxes as are collected from the agricultural class in
England. When public burdens draw on his income to the extent that he is
not left a living profit, the Anglo-Saxon will leave the land to be
occupied by an unenterprising class of people who are content to
vegetate, not to live. The pre-eminent essential in Canada's policy is
to make farming profitable