Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 10

The man who views the border people of the United States with calm observation will soon come to the conclusion that a state of government, if it may be so called, where the commonest ruffian a.s.serts privileges which the most educated and refined mind never dreams of, is not an enviable order of things.

In the first fury of a war with England, who were the promoters? the mob on the borders. Who hoped for a new sympathy demonstration, in order to annex Canada? the people of the Western States, who, far removed from the possibility of invasion, valiantly resolve to carry fire and sword among their unoffending brethren.

The intelligence and the wealth of the United States are pa.s.sive; they are physically weak, and therefore succ.u.mb to the dictation of the rude ma.s.ses. And what keeps up this singular action, but the constantly-recurring elections, the incessant balloting and voting, the necessity which every man feels hourly of saving his substance or his life from the devouring rapacity of those who think that all should be equal!

If the government, acutely sensible that war is an evil which must cripple its resources, is unwilling to engage in it, both from principle and from patriotism, it must yield if the mob wills it, or forfeit the sweets of office and of power. Hence, few men enter upon the cares of public life in the States now-a-days who are of that frame of mind which considers personal expediency as worthy of deep reflection. What would Was.h.i.+ngton have said to such a system?

The batteries or fortalices of Niagara and of Mississagua have led to a digression quite unintentional and unforeseen, which must terminate for the present with a different view from that of the author of the Letters above-mentioned: and let us hope fervently that the New World has not yet arrived at such a consummation as that of surpa.s.sing the vices and crimes of the Old, as we are certain it has not yet achieved such a moral victory as that of outrunning it in the race of scientific or mechanic fame. England is no more in her dotage than America is in her nonage. The former, without vanity or want of verity be it spoken, is as pre-eminent as the latter is honestly and creditably aspiring.

The writer above quoted says their s.h.i.+ps sail better, and are manned with fewer hands. We grant that no nation excels the United States in s.h.i.+p-building, and that they build vessels expressly for sailing; but for one English s.h.i.+p lost on the ocean, there are three of the venturous Americans; for one steam-vessel that explodes, and hurls its hundreds to destruction, in England or Canada, there are twenty Americans.

In England, the cautious, the slow and the sure plan prevails; in America, the go-ahead, reckless, dollar-making principle prevails; and so it is through every other concern of life. A hundred ways of wors.h.i.+pping the Creator, after the christian form, exist in America, where half a dozen suffice in England.

Time is money in America; the meals are hurried over, relaxations necessary to the enjoyment of existence forbidden--and what for? to make money. To what end? to spend it faster than it is made, and then to begin again. You have only a faint shadow of the immense wealth realized in England by that of the merchant or the shopkeeper in the States.

Capital there is constantly in a rapid consumption; and as the people engaged in the feverish excitement of acquiring it are in the latter country, from their habits, shortlived, so the opposite fact exhibits itself in England. There are no Rothschilds, no railway kings in America. Time and the man will not admit of it. John Jacob Astor is an exception to this fact.

On landing at Niagara, the difference of climate between it and Toronto is at once perceived. Here you are on sandy, there on clayey soil. Here all is heat, there moisture. I tried hard for several seasons to bring the peach to perfection at Toronto, only thirty-six miles from Niagara, without success; at Niagara it grows freely, and almost spontaneously, as well as the quince. The fields and the gardens of Niagara are a fortnight or more in advance of those of Toronto. Strange that the pa.s.sage of the westerly winds across Ontario should make such a difference!

Niagara is a grand racing-stand, where all the loafers of the neighbouring republic congregate in the autumn; I was unfortunately present at the last races, and never desire to repeat my visit at that season. Blacklegs and whitelegs prevail; and the next morning the course was strewed with the bodies of drunken vagabonds. It appears to me very strange that the gentry of the neighbourhood suffer a very small modic.u.m of ephemeral newspaper notoriety to get the better of their good sense.

The patronage of such a racecourse as that of Niagara, so far from being an honour, is the reverse. It is too near the frontier to be even decently respectable; nor is the course itself a good one, for the sand is too deep. Many a young gentleman of Toronto, who thinks that he copies the aristocracy of England by patronizing the turf, finds out to his own loss and sorrow that it would have been much better to have had his racing qualifications exhibited nearer his own door; and there cannot possibly be a greater colonial mistake committed than to fancy that grooms, stable-boys, and blacklegs, are now the advisers and companions of our juvenile n.o.bility.--That day has pa.s.sed!

It is very unfortunate that very false ideas exist in some of the colonies of the manners and customs of high life in England. The grown-up people often fancy that cold reserve, and an a.s.sumption of great state, indicate high birth and breeding. The younger branches seem frequently to think that there is no such thing at home as the period of adolescence; consequently, you often see a pert young master deliver his unasked opinion and behave before his seniors and superiors as though he wanted to intimate that he was wiser in his generation than they.

In crossing to Niagara, we had a specimen of the precocious colonist of 1845. The table of the captain of the boat, like that of his respected father, was good and decorously conducted, and there were several ladies and some most respectable travelled Americans at dinner. A very young gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night before--champagne, by the by, is thought a very aristocratic drink among psuedo-great men, although it is common as ditch-water in the United States--engrossed the whole conversation of the dinner-table, picked his teeth, took up the room of two, called the waiter fifty times, and ended by ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and puddings were removed. The company present rose before the dessert appeared, thoroughly disgusted; and I afterwards saw this would-be man peeping into the windows of the ladies'-cabin, and performing a thousand other antic tricks, cigar in mouth, for which he would in England have met with his deserts.

The precociousness of Transatlantic children is not confined to the United States--it is equally and unpleasantly visible in Canada.

The Americans who travel, I can safely say, are not guilty of these monstrous absurdities. I have crossed the Atlantic more than once with boys of from seventeen to twenty, who have left college to make the grand tour, without ever observing any thing to find fault with. The American youth is observant, and soon discovers that attempting to do the character of men before his time in the society of English strangers invariably lowers instead of raising an interest.

There is a good caricature of this in an American book, I forget its t.i.tle, written some time ago, to show the simplicity, gullibility, and vindictivness of our Trollopean travellers. It is a boy of sixteen, or thereabouts, cigar in the corner of his mouth, hat c.o.c.ked on three curls, and all the modern etceteras of a complete youth, saying to his father, "Here, take my boots, old fellow, and clean them." The father looks a little amazed, upon which the manikin e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es, "Why don't you take them? what's the use of having a father?"

There will be a railway smash in this, as well as in the locomotive mania. Republicanism towards elders and parents is unnatural; the child and the man were not born equal.

I remember reading in a voluminous account of the terrors of the French revolution a remarkable pa.s.sage:--servants denounced masters, debtors denounced creditors, women denounced husbands, children denounced parents, youth denounced protecting age; grat.i.tude was unknown; a favour conferred led to the guillotine: but never, never in that awful period, in that reign of the vilest pa.s.sions of our nature over reason, was there one instance, one single instance, of a parent denouncing its child.

It is not a good sign when extreme youth pretends to have discovered the true laws of the universe, when the son is wiser than the father, or when immature reason usurps the functions of the ripened faculties.

I have put this together because I hear hourly parents deprecating the system of education in the greatest city of Western Canada; because I hear and see children of fourteen swaggering about the streets with all the consequence of unfledged men, smoking cigars, frequenting tavern-bars and billiard-rooms, and no doubt led by such unbridled license into deeper mysteries and excesses; because I hear clergymen lament that boys of that age lose their health by excesses too difficult of belief to fancy true. Surely a salutary check in time may be applied to such an evil.

But liberty and equality, as I said before, are extending on both sides of the Atlantic: and in their train come these evils, simply because liberty and equality are as much misunderstood as real republicanism and limited monarchy are.

CHAPTER VIII.

The old Canadian Coach--Jonathan and John Bull pa.s.sengers--"That Gentleman"--Beautiful River, beautiful drive--Brock's Monument--Queenston--Bar and Pulpit--Trotting horse Railroad--Awful accident--The Falls once more--Speculation--Water privilege--Barbarism--Museum--Loafers--Tulip-trees--Rattlesnakes--The Burning Spring--Setting fire to Niagara--A charitable Woman--The n.i.g.g.e.r's Parrot--John Bull is a Yankee--Political Courts.h.i.+p--Lundy's Lane--Heroine--Welland Ca.n.a.l.

I can make no stay at Niagara for the present; but, after resting awhile at Howard's Inn, which is the most respectable one in the town, proceed in his coach to Queenston.

The old Canadian coach has not yet quite vanished before modern improvement. It is a mighty heavy, clumsy conveniency, hung on leather springs, and looking for all the world as if elephants alone could move it along; and, if it should upset, like Falstaff, it may ask for levers to lift it up again.

We had on board the coach an American, of the species Yankee, a thorough bluff, rosy, herculean, Yorks.h.i.+re-farmer, and several highly respectable females.

I will not say Jonathan did not spit before them, for he is to the manner born; but, although of inferior grade, if there can be such a thing mentioned respecting a citizen of the United States, and particularly of "the Empire State," of which he was, to his credit be it said, he treated the females with that courtesy, rough as it is, which seems innate with all Americans.

A stormy discussion arose on the part of John Bull, who hated slavery, disliked spitting, got angry about Brock's monument, and, in short, looked down with no small share of contempt upon the man of yesterday, whose ideas of right and wrong were so diametrically opposed to his own, and who very sententiously expressed them.

John told him that the only thing he had never heard in his travels through the Northern and Western States--where he had been to look at the land with a view to purchase, either there or in Canada, as might be most advisable--the only thing he had never heard was that all the citizens of the United States were all "gentlemen."

"I guess you didn't hear with both ears, then, for you always must have remarked that whenever one citizen spoke of another, he said 'that gentleman.'"

John laughed outright. "No, friend, I never did hear your white gentlemen call a n.i.g.g.e.r 'that gentleman;' so, you see, all your folks ain't equal, and all ain't gentlemen. Here, in Canada, I have heard a blacky called 'that gentleman;' and, by George, if many more of your runaway slaves cross the border, they will soon be the only gentlemen in Canada, for they are getting very impudent and very numerous."

This is, in a measure, true; such troops of escaped negroes are annually forwarded to Canada by the abolitionists that the Western frontier is overrun already, and the impudence of these newly free knows no bounds.

But they cordially hate both the Southern slaveholders and the abolitionists.

Talking of slavery, pray read an account of it from an American of the Northern States.

"New Orleans, January 26, 1846.

"A man may be no abolitionist--I am not one; he may think but little on the subject of slavery--it has never troubled me one way or the other: but let him mark the records of the glorious battles of the Revolution; let him notice the Eagle of Liberty, and all the emblems of Independence, Freedom, and the rights of man; let him muse on the thoughts they awaken, and then behold the actualities of life around him. Suddenly the sharp rap of an auctioneer's hammer startles him, and the loud striking of the hour of twelve will divert his attention to the throng of men around him, and the appearance of three or four men on raised stands in different parts of the Rotunda, who are calling the attention of those around him, at the same time unrolling a hand-bill that the stranger has noticed in the most conspicuous places in the city, printed in French and English, announcing the sale of a lot of fine, likely slaves; at the same time, he observes maps of real estates spread out--everything in fact around him denoting a 'busy mart where men do congregate,' as it really is.

"The auctioneer, making the most noise, attracts his attention first; joining the crowd in front of the stand, he observes twelve or fifteen negroes of all ages and both s.e.xes standing in a line to the left of the auctioneer; they are comfortably, and some of them neatly dressed, particularly the women, with their yellow Madras handkerchiefs tied around their heads, and their bright, showy dresses; but they have a look that irresistibly causes him to think back for a comparison to the objects before him, and it seems strange that it should bring to mind some market or field where he has sometimes seen cattle offered for sale, whose saddened look seemed to forbode some evil to them; but the animal look is somewhat redeemed by the smiles and plays of the little _piccaninies_, who seem to wonder why they are there, with so many men looking at them.--Now for business.

"'Maria, step up here. There, gentlemen, is a fine, likely wench, aged twenty-five; she is warranted healthy and sound, with the exception of a slight lameness in the left leg, which does not damage her at all. Step down, Maria, and walk.' The woman gets down, and steps off eight or ten paces, and returns with a slight limp, evidently with some pain, but doing her best to conceal her defect of gait. The auctioneer is a Frenchman, and announces everything alternately in French and English.

'Now, gentlemen, what is bid? she is warranted, elle est gurantie, and sold by a very respectable citizen. 250 dollars, deux cent et cinquante dollars: why, gentlemen, what do you mean! Get down, Maria, and walk a little more. 275, deux cent soixante et quinze, 300, trois cents!--go on, gentlemen--325, trois cents et vingt cinq! once, twice, ah! 350, trois cents et cinquante: une fois! deux fois! going, gone, for 350 dollars. A great bargain, gentlemen.'

"My attention is called to the opposite side of the room: 'Here, gentlemen, is a likely little orphan yellow girl, six years old--what is bid? combien? thirty-five dollars, trente cinq, fifty dollars, cinquante dollars, thank you.' Finally, she is knocked down at seventy-five dollars.

"Why, there is a whole family on that other stand; let us see them.

'There, gentlemen, is a fine lot: w.i.l.l.y, aged thirty-five, an expert boy, a good carpenter, brickmaker, driver, in fact, can do anything, il sait faire tout. His wife, Betty, is thirty-three, can wash, cook, wait on the table, and make herself generally useful; also their boy George, five years old; you will observe, gentlemen, that Betty est enceinte.

Now what is bid for this valuable family?' After a lively compet.i.tion, they are bid off at 1,550 dollars, the whole family.

"As I have before remarked, everything is done in French and English; even the negroes speak both languages. I saw one poor old negro, about sixty, put up, but withdrawn, as only 270 dollars were bid for him.

While waiting to be sold, they are examined and questioned by the purchasers. One young girl, about sixteen or eighteen, was being inspected by an elderly, stern, sharp-eyed, horse-jockey looking man, who sported his gold chains, diamond pin, ruffles, and cane: 'How old are you?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'Do you know how to eat?' 'Everybody does that,' she said sullenly.

"Pa.s.sing up the Esplanade next morning, (Sunday) I saw some forty or fifty very fine-looking negroes and negresses, all neatly dressed, standing on a bench directly in front of a building, which I took to be a meeting or school house: walking by, a genteel-looking man stepped up and asked me if I wished to buy a likely boy or girl. Telling him I was a stranger, and asking for information, he told me it was one of the slave-markets; that they stood there for examination, and that he had sold 500,000 dollars worth and sent them off that morning.

"The above facts are some of the singular features (to a Northerner) of this remarkable place, and I a.s.sure you that I 'nothing extenuate, or set down aught in malice;' but may the time come when even a black man may say, 'I am a man!'

"NORTHROP."

I once relieved a poor black wretch who was starving in the streets of Kingston, and told him where to go to get proper advice and protection: all the thanks I received were that he was sorry he ran away, for he had been a waiter somewhere in the South, and got a good many dollars by his situation; whereas, he said, Canada was a poor country, and he had no hope of thriving in it.