Scotland, who think before they leap, have connexions already established in Canada, and small capitals to commence with. These are the really valuable settlers: they go to Canada for land and living; and eschew the land and liberty system of the neighbouring nation. Wherever they settle, the country flourishes and becomes a second Britain in appearance, as may be observed in the London and western districts.

It does not require a very lengthened acquaintance with Canada to form observations upon the characters of the immigrants, as the Webster style of Dr. Johnson will have the word to be.

The English franklin and the English peasant who come here usually weigh their allegiance a little before they make up their minds; but, if they have been persuaded that Queen Victoria's reign is a "baneful domination," they either go to the United States at once, or to those portions of Canada where sympathy with the Stars and Stripes is the order of the day.[2]

If they be Scotch Radicals, the most uncompromising and the most bitter of all politicians, they seek Canada only with the ultimate hope of revolutionizing it.

But the latter are more than balanced by the respectable Scotch, who emigrate occasionally upon the same principles which actuate the respectable portion of the English emigrants, and by the hardy Highlanders already settled in various parts of the colony, whose proverbial loyalty is proof against the arts of the demagogue.

The great mass of emigrants may however be said to come from Ireland, and to consist of mechanics of the most inferior class, and of labourers. These are all impressed with the most absurd notions of the riches of America, and on landing at Quebec often refuse high wages with contempt, to seek the Cathay of their excited imaginations westward.

If they be Orangemen, they defy the Pope and the devil as heartily in Canada as in Londonderry, and are loyal to the backbone.

If they are Repealers, they come here sure of immediate wealth, to kick up a deuce of a row, for two shillings and sixpence currency is paid for a day's labour, which two shillings and sixpence was a hopeless week's fortune in Ireland; and yet the Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no means the worst subjects in this Trans-Atlantic realm, as I can personally testify, having had the command of large bodies of them during the border troubles of 1837-8. They are all loyal and true.

In the event of a war, the Catholic Irish, to a man—and what a formidable body it is in Canada and the United States!—will be on the side of England. O'Connell has prophesied rightly there, for it is not in human nature to forget the wrongs which the Catholics have suffered for the past ten years in a country professing universal freedom and toleration.

The Americans of the better classes with whom I have conversed admit this, but their dislike of the Irish is rooted and general among all the native race; and they fear as well as mistrust them, because, in many of the largest cities, New York for one, the Irish predominate.

The Americans say, and so do the Canadians, that, for some years back, since the repeal agitation at home, a few very ignorant and very turbulent priests, of the lowest grade, have found their way across the Atlantic. I have travelled all over Canada, and lived many years in the country, and have been thrown among all classes, from my having been connected with the militia. I never saw but one specimen of Irish hedge-priest, and therefore do not credit the assertion; this one came out last year, and a more furious bigot or a more republican ultra I never met with, at the same time that he was as ignorant as could be conceived.

Such has not hitherto been the case with the Catholic priesthood of the Canadas. The French Canadian clergy are a body of pious, exemplary men, not perhaps shining in the galaxy of science, but unobtrusive, gentlemanly, and an honour to the soutane and chasuble.

The priests from Ireland are not numerous, for the Irish chapels were, till very lately, generally presided over by Scotch missionaries; and I can safely say that, whether Irish or Scotch, the Catholic priesthood of Western Canada will not yield the palm to their Franco-Canadian brethren of the cross, and that loyalty is deeply inculcated by them. I have long and personally known and admired the late Bishop Mac Donell; a worthier or a better man never existed. The highest and the lowest alike loved him.

I saw him bending under the weight of years, passed in his ministry and in the defence of his adopted country, just before he left Canada, to lay his bones in his natal soil, preside over the ceremony of placing the first stone of the Catholic seminary, for which he had given the ground and funds to the utmost of his ability.

He was a large, venerable-looking man, unwieldy from the infirmities of age and a life of toil and trouble; and the affecting and touching portion of the scene before us was to see him supported on his right and left by the arms of a Presbyterian colonel and a colonel of the Church of England.

This is true Christianity, true charity—peace be to his soul!—

His successor was a Canadian, equally free from pretension and bigotry; and he was succeeded by an Irishman, whose mission is to heal the wounds of party and strife. He is living and in office; I cannot, therefore, speak of him; but, differing as an Englishman so widely as I do in religious tenets from his, I can freely assert that, if clergymen of every denomination pursued the same course of brotherly love that he does, we should hear no more of the fierce and undying contention about subjects which should be covered with the veil of benevolence and humility.

You cannot force a man to think as you do, to draw him into what you conceive to be the true path; mildness and conciliation are much more likely to effect your object than the Emperor of China's yellow stick. The days of the Inquisition, of Judge Jefferies, and of Claverhouse, are happily gone by; and the artillery of man's wrath now vents its harmless thunders much in the same way as the thunders of the Vatican, or the recent fulmination of the Archbishop of Paris against the author of the Wandering Jew; that is to say, with a great deal of noise, but without much damnifying any one, as the public soon formed a true judgment of M. Sue and of the tendency of his works.

On the other hand, how horrible it is, and what a fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandoned the pleasures of existence, to have broken through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection and infallibility, the attributes of his Creator, devoting the altar at which he serves to the wicked purposes of arraying man against man, and of embruing the hands held up before him at prayer in the blood of his fellow-mortals!

But such is the inevitable tendency of the system of "I am better than thou," whether it be practised by a Catholic priest of the hedge-school, by a fanatic bawler about new light, or by a fierce and uncompromising churchman. Faith, hope, and charity, are alike misinterpreted and misunderstood. Faith with these consists in blind or hypocritical devotion to their peculiar opinions and dogmas; hope is limited to the narrowest circle of ideas; and charity, Divine charity, exists not; for even the very relics, the mouldering bones of the defunct, are not allowed to rest side by side; and as to those differing in the slightest degree from them, to them charity extends not, however pious, however sincere, or however excellent they may be.

The people of England are very little aware how widely Roman Catholicism extends in the United States and in Canada. From