At all seasons but especially in winter the news that reached Malbaie was of a very fragmentary character. With his kin in Scotland Nairne exchanged only an annual letter but since each side took time and pains to prepare it, the letter told more, probably, than would a year's bulk of our hurried epistles. Newspapers were few and dear and only at intervals did any come. Books too were scarce. Occasionally Nairne notes those that he thought of buying—St. Simon's "Memoirs;" an account of the Court of Louis XIV; "A Comparative View of the State and Facultys of Man with those of the Animal World;" "Elegant Extracts or Useful and Entertaining passages in prose," a companion volume to a similar one in poetry, and so on. He writes gratefully, in 1799, to a friend in Quebec, who had sent newspapers and sermons, both of which remotely different classes of literature had furnished "great entertainment." From Europe he is receiving the volumes of the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, still on the shelves at Murray Bay, and is thankful that they were not captured by the French. "The older I grow the fonder I am of reading and that book is a great resource." Our degenerate age gets little "entertainment" out of sermons and usually keeps an encyclopædia strictly for "reference"; obviously Nairne read it.
The old soldier watched and commented upon developments which were the fruit of seed he himself had helped to sow. He had fought to win Canada for Britain; he had fought to crush the American Revolution. By 1800 he sees how great Canada may become and is convinced that yielding independence to the United States has not proved very injurious to Great Britain. Though, in a short time, the United States was to secure the great West by purchasing Louisiana from France, when Nairne died it had not done so and in 1800 he could say that the United States "are small in comparison of the whole of North America. They are bounded upon all sides and will be filled up with people in no very great number of years. Our share of North America is yet unknown in its extent. Enterprising people in quest of furs travel for years towards the north and towards the west through vast countries of good soil uninhabited as yet ... [except] for hunting, and watered with innumerable lakes and rivers, stored with fish, besides every other convenience for the use of man, and certainly destined to be filled with people in some future time. We have only [now] heard of one named Mackenzie[17] who is reported to have been as far as the Southern Ocean (from Canada) across this continent to the West." Long before Canada stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Nairne was thus dreaming of what we now see.
Of war, then raging, Nairne took a philosophic view. "War may be necessary," he writes in 1798, "for some very Populous countrys as any crop when too thick is the better of being thinned." But it occurred to him that the problem of over-population in Europe might have been solved in a less crude manner. "It is strange," he says, "that there should be so much of the best part of the globe still unoccupied, where the foot of man never trod, and in Europe such destruction of people. It is however for some purpose we do not, as yet, comprehend." Those were the days when Napoleon Bonaparte's star was rising and when, in defiance of England, led by Pitt, he smote state after state which stood in the path of his ambition. Nairne's friend and business agent James Ker, an Edinburgh banker, was obviously no admirer of Pitt, for he writes on July 20th, 1797, of the struggle with revolutionary France which, though it was to endure for more than twenty years, had already, he thought, lasted too long:
After a four years' war undertaken for the attainment of objects which were unattainable, in which we have been gradually deserted by every one of our allies except Portugal, ... too weak to leave us; and after a most shameless extravagance and Waste of the public money which all feel severely by the imposition of new and unthought of taxes, we have again sent an ambassador to France to try to procure us Peace.... If our next crop be as bad as our two last ones God knows what will become of us. If it were not for the unexampled Bounty and Charity of the richer classes the Poor must have literally starved, but we have been favoured with a very mild winter.
In 1798 when Napoleon led his forces to Egypt and disappeared from the ken of Europe, Nairne hopes devoutly that "he has gone to the Devil, or, which is much the same thing, among the Turks and Tartars where he and his army may be destroyed." After Nelson succeeded in his attack on the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile Nairne rejoices that his country is supreme on the sea, "By ruling the waves she will rule the wealth of the world not by plunder and conquest but by wisdom and commerce and increasing riches everywhere to the happiness of mankind." On March 20th, 1801, when Austria had just made with France the Peace of Lunéville, Ker writes again to Nairne:
We live in the age of wonders, sudden changes and Revolutions. The French have now completely turned the tables on us. They have forced Austria to a disastrous peace and Russia, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden from being our friends and Allies are now uniting with our bitter foes for our destruction, so that from having almost all Europe on our side against France we have now the contest to support alone against her and almost all Europe and nothing prevents the ambitious French Republic from being conquerors of the world but our little Islands and our invincible fleets. Notwithstanding all this we do not seem afraid of invasion and a large fleet under Sir Hide Parker and Lord Nelson is preparing to sail for the Baltic to bring the northern powers to a sense of their duty, and to break in pieces the unnatural coalition with our inveterate foes, the foes of Religion, Property, true Liberty, which but for our strenuous efforts would soon nowhere exist on this Globe.
In spite of what Ker says as to no fear of invasion, such a fear grew really very strong in 1801, and, for a brief period, it seemed as if Murray Bay might become a refuge for Nairne's kindred in the distressed mother land. One of his sisters writes in an undated letter:
We are much obliged to you for the kind of reception you say we should have met with at Mal Bay had we fled there from the French and I do assure you ... it was for some time a very great comfort and relief to think we had resources to trust to. I for one, I am sure, was almost frightened out of my wits, for a visit from these monsters, even the attempt, tho' they had been subdued after landing, was fearsome. I suspect you might have had more of your friends than your own family to have provided for. The Hepburns I know turned their thoughts toward you and all of us determined to work for our bread the best way we could. But you might have no small addition to your settlers; some of us poor old creatures would have settled heavy enough I fear upon yourself and family. It is a fine place Mal Bay turned by your account. What a deal of respectable company. I am glad of it on your account. A very great piece of good fortune to get Col. Fraser so near; I wonder he does not marry Maidy, but she will think him too old. I think Christine may do a great deal worse than spend the summer if not more at Mal Bay. You are most amazingly indulgent to her. I wish she would make a grateful return by bestowing more of her company on her friends at home in a situation it would appear so pleasant. But she is a good kind-hearted Lassie after all and I suppose when she has got her full swing of Quebec she will be very well pleased to return home.
A legislature now sat at Quebec, the result of the new Constitutional Act passed in 1791, and Nairne might have become a member. Murray Bay then formed a part of what, with little fitness, had been called by the English conquerors the County of Northumberland, no doubt because it lay in the far north of Canada as Northumberland lies in the far north of England. Two members sat in the legislature for this county. "I never had any idea of trying to be one of them," writes Nairne in 1800, "but succeeded in procuring that honour for a friend Dr. Fisher, who resides in Quebec. He is rich and much flattered with it and is ready on all occasions to speak."
To Nairne, contrary to a general impression, the climate of Canada did not seem to grow milder as the land was cleared. In any case the blood of old age runs less hotly. Formerly the winter had its delights of hunting excursions but now, he writes, these are all over. "The passion I had formerly for hunting and fishing and wandering through the woods is abated.... What with the cold hand of old age my former Winter excursions into the woods seem impossible and no more now of fishing and hunting which formerly I esteemed so interesting a business." He writes again: "My employment is more in the sedentary way than formerly and what from calls in my own affairs and calls from people here in theirs, accounts to settle, &c., [I have] ... plenty of occupation. Besides being a Justice of the Peace and Colonel of Militia ... I employ myself without doors in farming, gardening, clearing and manuring land." If we may credit the words of Bishop Hubert of Quebec written just at this time (in 1794) the new liberties gained by the habitants did not make the seigneur's task easier. The good bishop makes sweeping charges of general dishonesty; of attempts to defraud the church of her tithe and the seigneurs of their dues; of bitter feuds between families and innumerable law suits. In such conditions Nairne, as a justice of the peace, would have his hands full.