ld
be six hundred and thirty-six, if the country was fully settled, it is
a fanciful picture that the reformers have drawn of their power and
resources--power which is really derived only from intermarriages
among the few remnants of the earliest loyalist settlers, or from
admiration of their private conduct and abilities. In short, "the
family compact" is a useful bugbear; it is kept up constantly before
the Canadians, to deter them from looking too closely into other
compacts, which, to say the truth, are sometimes neither so national,
so loyal, nor so easily explained.

Canada is, at this juncture, without question, the most free and the
happiest country in the whole world; not that it resembles Utopia, or
the happy valley of Rasselas, but because it has no grievances that
may not be remedied by its own parliament--because it has no
taxation--because its government is busied in developing its splendid
internal resources--and because the Mother Country expends annually
enormous sums within its boundaries or in protecting its commerce.

Why does England desire that the banner of the Three Crosses shall
float on the citadels of Quebec and Kingston? why does she desire to
see that flag pre-eminent on the waters of Lake Superior or in the
ports of Oregon? Is it because Canada is better governed as an
appanage of the Crown of Victoria than it possibly could be by Mr.
Polk? Is it from a mere desire for territory that the mistress of the
seas throws her broad shield over the northern portion of North
America? or is it because the treasury of England has millions of bars
of gold and of silver, deposited in its vaults by the subjects of
Canada?

No, it is from none of these motives: 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.

Is it because the St. Lawrence trade affords a nursery for her seamen,
or that Newfoundland is the naval school? No; about three or four
British vessels now fish on the grand banks, where hundreds once cast
anchor. The fisheries are boat-fisheries on the shores instead of at
sea, and the timber trade would engage British shipping and British
sailors just as largely if Quebec had the beaver emblazoned on the
flag of its fortress as if the flag of a thousand years floated over
its walls.

The resources of England are inconceivable; if one sour