Canadian Transport Sourcebook

THE CURSE OF THE CANADA COMPANY

The establishing of Chicago was first commenced in the early part of the summer of 1833, and in March last it contained upwards of five thousand inhabitants.

A piece of land in the immediate vicinity purchased in 1831 for sixty-three dollars was sold last June for one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. In July last 925 Town Lots were advertised for sale, and within five days 185 of them were sold and paid for, cash down, one million, two hundred thousand, four hundred and twenty-four dollars.

In one day—the third anniversary of its establishment—its inhabitants alone subscribed one hundred and twenty thousand dollars for the building of a most splendid steamboat.

Fort Wayne was very lately merely a military post in a wilderness without even a single house in its vicinity—what has it becomes I do not know; but the Collector there has applied for an augmentation of salary, sufficient to enable him to engage and pay two Assistants, saying that he has received since last spring from twenty to twenty-six thousand dollars a day, and it being mostly in small sums, he cannot continue doing so alone. The question naturally arises here: What has Goderich with this whole tract, both begun to settle in 1828, nearly three times as old as Chicago, and by water at least 500 miles nearer to New York, Montreal, Quebec or any other seaport than Chicago, to shew, bearing any resemblance of improvements? Nothing but unparalleled poverty, distress and discontent, with a consequent daily loss and desertion of inhabitants and settlers. What is the cause of that difference—so great success there and such non-success here? Because the lands for the town and country there belonged to just and humane men, knowing their business and their own interest, and because their settlers and inhabitants feel, and do by their manly acts shew that they feel, their intrinsic worth as white and free born-men; while the lands-here belonged to hardhearted, arrogant, oppressing and, tyrannical disposed men, ignorant of the requisites for the settling of large tracts of wild lands, besides looking down upon the farmers—styled "peasantry", clown, rustics, etc. by them, and upon mechanics—styled the lowest order, as if they both belonged to the brute creation. And which feelings they but too plainly express, as they have frequently done to myself, saying: "Bah! the peasants to be allowed to appear at public meetings and to have a vote—no! they should be allowed to clear off and till their lands and nothing more;" which I interpret thus: The farmers should first make a country, and when done so say: "Gentlemen! now we have made the country, deign you to take the governing of it quite at your own pleasure, we'll furnish you with all the monies you may at any and all times demand from us for your trouble in doing so—and that without any or the least claim whatever to any control over the use you may please to make of these monies."

Do you, farmers and mechanics, submit to all this? Yes, they do, and that tamely,—I might all but say, shamefully too. How is that possible? Not only possible, but very easy to be explained. Our settlers are, so to say, altogether newcomers from Great Britain, and composing (generally speaking) the following two classes, viz:—l. Of the poorest poor in their native country, and broke into the yoke there, nearly like the newly caught wild horses for the saddle—by at least half starvation—a taming method far more efficacious than that by the cane or whip; and who needs to be told of the hardships such men are submitting to suffer whilst first settling in a wilderness remote from old settlements? 2. Of could-not-be in Europe, but would-be gentlemen here, proud, arrogant, etc., without footing, and used from infancy to having described the Colonies as worked by slaves—to be guided—next to by the whip given into the hands of any lazy or worthless fellow from Europe. Yes, even a newspaper pedlar's family, buying such by parcels, and carrying the same on the left arm for sale in retail in the streets, public places, beer-shops and pot-houses in London—I have heard call themselves (on arriving here) the family of an "English County Squire", and the sons "the sons of Squire - - - -" These kind of folks betake themselves fortwith to clearing, it is true, and even more rapidly than we do; but with this difference—we clear off lands, they clear out their pockets. This done, what else can be expected of them but that they will cringe, fawn and crawl before the Canada Commissioner, the sole canal by which Government and all other offices of emolument and, of course, of honour, can be obtained here. More and worse, indeed, I might say on this point, but I abstain and pause.

There are among us, it is true, some settlers respectable in every sense of the term, who have come with the intention of earning honestly, and by the sweat of their brow, their livelihood, and do so nobly, and despise, like as I do, all such as are only anxious to live on the fruits of the industry of their fellow-settlers; but what can, what could, they effect by exposing the misdeeds under which we suffer to an unheard-of degree? Were they even to write with a pen of Thirsis' wing, and dipped in the tears and in the blood of honest and industrious settlers, would their signatures not be outnumbered by those of selfish and base creatures?

In conclusion, I beg to take a retrospective view of the rank farmers and mechanics hold in the United States, where men are valued by their utility, and not by a show of foppery.

Yes, the colours of farmers and mechanics wave and float over the Capitolium of that rich, powerful and noble State. And nearly altogether so over those of the whole Union. Reader, compare that with the rank manual farmers hold here, and say with me, "the private state here is the only one of honour."