CHAPTER V.
Progress of India and the Colonies
(Since 1815).
(Canada).
1. The French Canadians, after the conquest of their country by the British, were turned into loyal citizens of the empire by being left in the enjoyment of their own language, laws, and religion. Even when our American colonies rose in rebellion, they remained true to the British Crown. The same feeling of loyalty led many of the American colonists themselves to throw in their lot with the old country. They banded themselves together as the United Empire Loyalists, and fought on the side of Britain rather than help their fellow-colonists to rend the empire.
2. On the conclusion of the war that gave the American colonies their independence (1783), thousands of the "Loyalists" came streaming across the Canadian frontier, leaving behind them the bulk of their property, and forced to starve and struggle for years before they could carve comfortable homes out of the Canadian forests. Many of them migrated to Nova Scotia, others found rest in the beautiful valley of the St. John river, and founded the province of New Brunswick, whilst others toiled up the St. Lawrence to create the fertile and busy province of Ontario, thus building up a British colony in Upper Canada by the side of the old French colony in Lower Canada.
3. The inrush of loyalist refugees from the lost colonies was followed by a large immigration from the mother-country, and especially from Scotland. Of the Scotch peasants who emigrated many came from the same district, and held together in the new country. On the downfall of Napoleon the tide of emigration flowed more strongly than ever. We hear of four hundred discharged Irish soldiers coming over in a body with their old regimental officers at their head, and forming a regular military camp in the backwoods, till their united efforts had cut out the roads and fields, and built the houses required for the settlement. We find, in fact, that a large proportion of the early settlers were old soldiers, and they handled the pruning-hook none the worse for having once handled the sword. While the silence of the desert spread over the barren moors and hillsides of Scotland and Ireland, the Canadian woods were ringing with the settler's axe.
4. Emigration to Canada has gone on ever since, though at a slower rate than in those early years when 160,000 emigrants landed on Canadian soil in the space of four years. One of the most interesting experiments in Canadian emigration has been made in our own day. During the last ten or a dozen years about ten thousand picked boys and girls, from the homes of the "National Waifs' Association," have been settled by Dr. Barnardo on a large estate in Manitoba, or placed out as labourers and servants on Canadian farms, with the happiest results.