The careless, disrespectful manner often used in this country by children to their parents, is an evil which in all probability originates in this early introduction of young people into the mysteries of society. They imagine themselves persons of consequence, and that their opinion is quite equal in weight to the experience and superior knowledge of their elders. We cannot imagine a more revolting sight than a young lad presuming to treat his father with disrespect and contempt, and daring presumptuously to contradict him before ignorant idlers like himself.
"You are wrong, Sir; it is not so"--"Mamma, that is not true; I know better," are expressions which I have heard with painful surprise from young people in this country; and the parents have sunk into silence, evidently abashed at the reproof of an insolent child.
These remarks are made with no ill-will, but with a sincere hope that they may prove beneficial to the community at large, and be the means of removing some of the evils which are to be found in our otherwise pleasant and rapidly-improving society.
I know that it would be easier for me to gain the approbation of the Canadian public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will really find, rather than by holding out fallacious hopes that can never be realized.
In "Roughing it in the Bush," I gave an honest personal statement of facts. I related nothing but what had really happened; and if illustrations were wanting of persons who had suffered as much, and been reduced to the same straits, I could furnish a dozen volumes without having to travel many hundred miles for subjects.
We worked hard and struggled manfully with overwhelming difficulties, yet I have been abused most unjustly by the Canadian papers for revealing some of the mysteries of the Backwoods. Not one word was said against the country in my book, as was falsely asserted. It was written as a warning to well-educated persons not to settle in localities for which they were unfitted by their previous habits and education. In this I hoped to confer a service both on them and Canada; for the prosperous settlement of such persons on cleared farms must prove more beneficial to the colony than their ruin in the bush.
It was likewise very cruelly and falsely asserted, that I had spoken ill of the Irish people, because I described the revolting scene we witnessed at Grosse Isle, the actors in which were principally Irish emigrants of the very lowest class. Had I been able to give the whole details of what we saw on that island, the terms applied to the people who furnished such disgusting pictures would have been echoed by their own countrymen. This was one of those cases in which it was impossible to reveal the whole truth.
The few Irish characters that occur in my narrative have been drawn with an affectionate, not a malignant hand. We had very few Irish settlers round us in the bush, and to them I never owed the least obligation. The contrary of this has been asserted, and I am accused of ingratitude by one editor for benefits I never received, and which I was too proud to ask, always preferring to work with my own hands, rather than to borrow or beg from others. All the kind acts of courtesy I received from the poor Indians this gentleman thought fit to turn over to the Irish, in order to hold me up as a monster of ingratitude to his countrymen.
In the case of Jenny Buchannon and John Monaghan, the only two Irish people with whom I had anything to do, the benefits were surely mutual. Monaghan came to us a runaway apprentice,--not, by-the-bye, the best recommendation for a servant. We received him starving and ragged, paid him good wages, and treated him with great kindness. The boy turned out a grateful and attached creature, which cannot possible confer the opposite character upon us.
Jenny's love and affection will sufficiently prove our ingratitude to her. To the good qualities of these people I have done ample justice. In what, then, does my ingratitude to the Irish people consist? I should feel much obliged to the writer in the London Observer to enlighten me on this head, or those editors of Canadian papers, who, without reading for themselves, servilely copied a falsehood.