This was an allusion, from the English standpoint, to the unfitness of French emigrants as agricultural settlers. The contrast between the results of farming industry in Upper and Lower Canada seemed to justify this prejudice. The comparison of the newly-arrived Frenchman to the frogs is a time-honored joke, supposed to have arisen from the alleged French national taste for frogs’-legs as a table delicacy.
Punch in Canada, 1849.
TOWNSHIPS COLONIZATION—A SETTLER.
YOUNG LITERARY LEADER.—HERE IS ONE SETTLER, SARE, FOR YOUR TOWNSHIP, SARE, ON YOUR FARM, SARE.
TOWNSHIPPER.—OH, THAT’S YOUR SETTLER, EH? WHY THERE’S LOTS OF THEM CHAPS HERE ALREADY—IN THE MASHES!
Punch in Canada, 1849.
A WINTER’S TALE.