I have an instance of the effect of excessive drinking daily before my door, in the person of a man of respectable family and of excellent talents, who, after habitually indulging himself with at last the moderate quantum of sixty glasses of spirits and water a day, now roams the streets a confirmed idiot, but, strange to say, never touches the cause of his malady. Are, therefore, not idiocy, madness, and perhaps two-thirds of the dreadful calamities to which human nature is subject here, owing to whiskey? I have seen an Irish labourer on the works take off at a draught a tumbler of raw whiskey, made from Indian corn or oats, to refresh himself; this would kill most men unaccustomed to it; but a corroded stomach it only stimulates.
Canada is a fine place for drunkards; it is their paradise—"Get drunk for a penny; clean straw for nothing" there. Think, my dear reader, of whiskey at tenpence a gallon—cheaper than water from the New River in London. Father Matthew, your principles are much wanted on this side of Great Britain.
Then, smoking to excess is another source of immense evil in the Backwoods. A man accustomed only to a cigar gets at last accustomed to the lowest and vilest of tobacco. I used to laugh at some of my friends in Seymour, when I saw them with a broken tobacco-pipe stuck in the ribbon of their straw hats. These were men who had paraded in their day the shady side of Pall Mall. They found a pipe a solace, and cigars were not to be had for love or money. "Why do you not put your pipe at least out of sight?" said I.
"It is the Seymour Arms' crest," responded my good-natured gentlemen farmers, "and we wear it accordingly."
Smoking all day, from the hour of rising, is, I actually believe, more injurious to the nerves than hard drinking. It paralyzes exertion. I never saw an Irish labourer, with his hod and his pipe, mounting a ladder, but I was sure to discover that he was an idler. I never had a groom that smoked much who took proper care of my horses; and I never knew a gentleman seriously addicted to smoking, who cared much for any thing beyond self. A Father Matthew pledge against the excessive use of tobacco would be of much more benefit among the labouring Irish than King James his Counterblast proved among the English.
The emigrant of education will naturally inquire, if, in case of war, he will be under the necessity of leaving his farm for the defence of the country.
The militia laws are now undergoing revision, in order to create an efficient force.
The militia of Western Canada are well composed, and have become a most formidable body of 80,000 men, [6] and are not to be classed with rude and undisciplined masses. In 1837, they rushed to the defence of their soil; and, so eager were they to attain a knowledge of the duties of a soldier, that, in the course of four months, many divisions were able to go through field-days with the regulars; and the embodied regiments, being clothed in scarlet, were always supposed by American visitors to be of the line.
There is a military spirit in this people, which only requires development and a good system of officer and sub-officer to make it shine. Any attempt to create partizan officers must be repressed, and merit and stake in the country alone attended to.
The population of the British provinces cannot now be less than nearly two millions; and it only requires judgment to bring forward the Canadian French to insure their acting against an enemy daring to invade the country, as they so nobly did in 1812. I subjoin the latest correct census, 1844, of the Franco-Canadian race, as it will now be interesting in a high degree to the reader in Europe.