The population returns of Canada are not by any means accurate, the number of emigrants each year, with the uncertainty of their remaining in the province, adds to the difficulty of arriving at a correct estimate. I believe, from the information I have been able to obtain from the best sources, that about fourteen hundred thousand is the number of British subjects in this country; seven hundred and fifty thousand in the Lower and six hundred and fifty thousand in the Upper Province. Of these, five hundred and fifty thousand are of French descent, the remainder of the Anglo-Celtic race, with about six thousand Indians. The population has hitherto doubled itself in about every twenty-five years.

The annual average number of emigrants for the last fifteen years, has been twenty-five thousand, but it is supposed that a large portion of these have unadvisedly passed on to the United States; some have since returned to Canada, others soon went to rest in the pestilential western marshes, while others have been successful. But in Canada, with common regularity and industry, all are successful: the healthy climate spares them their vigour for labour; land is cheaper, and hardly less fertile: there are no taxes; the value of agricultural produce is greater in their markets than on the

banks of the Mississippi; and there is no Lynch Law.

The late Lord Durham, in his celebrated Report, delighted to extol the prosperity of our Republican neighbours, in contrast to the state of our fellowsubjects. A Select Committee of the Upper Canada House of Assembly drew up a counter-report to this, in which they indignantly, and with reason, deny the sweeping statements of the High Commissioner. I extract the following from the Committee's Report.

Having first described the surpassing prosperity of the United States, for the purpose of contrasting it with the poverty and inferiority of these colonies, His Lordship proceeds to state:'On the side of both the Canadas, and also of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a widely-scattered population, poor, and apparently unenterprising, though hardy and industrious, separated from each other by tracts of intervening forest, without towns and markets, almost without roads, living in mean houses, deriving little more than a rude subsistence from ill-cultivated land, and seemingly incapable of improving their condition, present the most instructive contrast to their enterprising and thriving. neighbours on the American side.' Let the farmers of all political parties, residing in the districts front

ing on the St. Lawrence, the owners of the extensive, beautiful, and well-cultivated lands on the Bay of Quintè, in the district of Newcastle, the Home, Gore, Niagara, London, and western districts, read this degrading account, and ask themselves whether they would feel perfectly safe in submitting their future political fate, and that of their children, to the dogmas of a man who has so grossly mis-stated their character and condition."

To the emigrant from the British Islands, there is, perhaps, no place in the world offering a better settlement than the eastern townships of Lower Canada. There, in his log hut, with his wife and children round him to cheer his labour, he may speedily cut out his independence from the magnificent forests, and possess the fertile land in less than twelve months of patient toil, enough is cleared for the production of sufficient potatoes and corn to place him beyond the reach of want, and set him in the road to competence. The first year is the difficulty, often a disheartening and almost intolerable struggle.

In Upper Canada, also, the prospects of the settler are not less encouraging. The Canada Company published, a few years ago, a statement of the condition of the people at the settlement of Gode

rich; the first commencement was in 1829; in 1840 six thousand people had established themselves there, and made improvements in the lands and acquired live stock, to the amount of £242,287; nearly half of this was in the possession of families who had originally nothing, or, at most, some few of them had ten pounds to start with; the remainder was accumulated by people who had been slightly better off in the world. Most of the first settlers have already paid out also the full extent of their purchase money, and are now freeholders of the land.

With a sufficient capital and extent of land under cultivation to make it worth while to devote his time to it, a man who understood it would at once be able to live in comfort, and make money on a farm. The French-Canadian gentleman, however, thinks it beneath his dignity, and trusts every thing to a subaltern: and the Englishman generally expends so much of his capital in the purchase of the land and stock, that, for years afterwards, he is crippled in the means of working his resources.

Horses and other cattle, though hardy and valuable in their way, are far inferior to the English breed, and not improved by a recent admixture with American blood. In Lower Canada the

maintenance of live stock during the long winters is very expensive, and the animals are usually miserably poor and thin; in short, but just kept from starving, till food becomes plentiful, in the spring.

The importance of the trade of the St. Lawrence to England is not to be estimated solely by the value of the goods exchanged, though, even in that point of view, it is very considerable; the productions of Canada sent to the British islands require, from their nature, an immense bulk of shipping, and thus give employ to a great number of the very best sailors. The inhabitants of this province consume a greater proportion of English goods than any people in the world, excepting those of Australia. The Canadian purchases nearly four times as much of the produce of British industry as the citizen of the United States; in return, he has hitherto obtained highly remunerating prices in our markets for everything he can send us, and in any quantity.

The tariff of the United States of course acts against the colonies, as well as against England; but it is obvious that with the very inefficient preventive force they possess, it must be a dead letter along twelve hundred miles of a frontier, a large part of which is forest or navigable water. A great