The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America

by Madison Grant

From the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a small but steady immigration from the British Isles into Upper Canada, though interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars. After the close of that conflict a larger movement of population took place, which brought in an extensive English population. Theretofore most of the arrivals had been Scotch or Americans, so that a visitor in 1810 commented on the fact that he met "scarcely any English and few Irish."

In 1815 the government began to assist immigrants by giving free passage and a grant of one hundred acres of land after arrival with a promise of free rations for the first six or eight months and a like amount of land to each male child on his reaching the age of twenty-one. A wise restriction required a deposit of a little less than one hundred dollars by the immigrant, to be returned to him after two years if he had complied with the terms of the contract on his behalf. These provisions were availed of mainly by Scotchmen going to Ontario. The scheme, however, had the advantage for our present purpose of establishing for the first time records of immigration, which thenceforth can be traced in detail.

In 1819 the emigration from British ports to Canada was in excess of 20,000, and continued for years at about this rate in spite of the booms which Australia and New Zealand were enjoying at the same time. There was a substantial movement of emigration toward Canada in the years 1830-34. In the nine years preceding 1837, more than a quarter of a million emigrants from the British Isles arrived at Quebec on their way westward, more than 50,000 of them in a single year.

Primogeniture in England has been a powerful factor in building up the British Commonwealth. The oldest son of a landed family inherited the estate and the titles, if any, and stayed at home. The younger sons, left to shift for themselves, were ready to emigrate. The colonies have thus received a great many more settlers of first-class ability than would otherwise have been the case. At the same time, the perpetuation of family continuity, through the preservation of the ancestral home intact, has been a strong psychological factor in maintaining a vigorous family life in the upper classes of Great Britain.

By 1840 the population of Canada was approximately a million and a half. During the next generation nearly a million more immigrants arrived from British ports—the great Irish migration changing the racial character of this movement markedly from about 1845. Prior to that time the newcomers were pre-dominantly English, with Wiltshire and Yorkshire largely represented. When the potato famine caused the Irish to seek refuge elsewhere, they naturally turned their steps to England, as the most easily and cheaply accessible of havens. Great Britain could absorb only a limited part of these and began to direct them to Canada, which, indeed, they preferred to the United States because the Catholic Church was strong there.

The emigrants were weak and in 1849 one-sixth of those who started are said to have died on the voyage. The number of Irish who left the United Kingdom in that year was 215,000, of whom nearly half were bound for Quebec. Canada became alarmed at being made the dumping ground of an enfeebled and destitute population so much in excess of its capacity to absorb, and, by increased taxes and other means, slowed down this immigration, which then headed toward the United States. Thereafter many of the Irish who had already gone to Canada moved on down into the Union, so that in the end Canada received a smaller part of the Irish Catholic migration than might be thought.

The census of 1871 furnishes a convenient point at which to take a review of the population. It then totalled 3,485,761 in the four original provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). British and French together, in the ratio of two to one, made up 92 per cent. The only foreign element which contributed as much as 1 per cent of the whole was the German, numbering more than 200,000 people, or 5.8 per cent.

The French Habitants have always formed a somewhat indigestible mass, but half a century of struggle had resulted in a workable system of government and compromise in the administrative life of the country. The dominant element was the British, and save for the great mass of French there was no large foreign block to menace the country's unity.

In sharp contrast to the settlement of the West of the United States, the occupation of the prairie and mountain provinces of Canada has been marked by law and order. In our West, especially in the mining districts, law was largely disregarded and its place taken by private justice, administered by individuals.

In Canada the Mounted Police have played a most efficient rôle in controlling both the settlers and the Indians. At the time of the Klondike rush in 1898, when hordes of gold seekers scrambled over the passes to the head waters of the Yukon, a handful of Mounted Police maintained a discipline for which the Americans themselves were very grateful. In the same way the administration of the mining laws of the Klondike, which is in Canadian territory, was admired and envied by the Americans there.