“Have you done this, or anything like it, for your children abroad? If you have, perhaps you will be kind enough to furnish me with some names, that I may mention them when I hear you accused of neglect. You are very hospitable and very considerate to strangers. The representative of any little insignificant German state, of the size of a Canadian township, has a place assigned him on state occasions. Do you ever show the same attention to the delegate of a colony, of infinitely more extent and value than Ireland? There can’t be a doubt you have, though I have never heard of it. Such little trifles are matters of course, but still, as great interests are at stake, perhaps it would be as well to notice such things occasionally in the Gazette, for distant and humble relations are always touchy.
“Ah, Doctor,” said I, “things can’t and won’t remain long as they are. England has three things among which to choose for her North American colonies:—First: Incorporation with herself, and representation in Parliament. Secondly: Independence. Thirdly: Annexation with the States. Instead of deliberating and selecting what will be most conducive to the interest of herself and her dependencies, she is allowing things to take their chance. Now, this is all very well in matters over which we have no control, because Providence directs things better than we can; but if one of these three alternatives is infinitely better than the other, and it is in our power to adopt it, it is the height of folly not to do so. I know it is said, for I have often heard it myself, Why, we can but lose the colonies at last. Pardon me, you can do more than that, for you can lose their affections also. If the partnership is to be dissolved, it had better be done by mutual consent, and it would be for the interest of both that you should part friends. You didn’t shake hands with, but fists at, us when we separated. We had a stand-up fight, and you got licked, and wounds were given that the best part of a century hasn’t healed, and wounds that will leave tender spots for ever; so don’t talk nonsense.
“Now, Doctor, mark my words. I say again, things won’t remain long as they are. I am glad I have you to talk to instead of the Squire, for he always says, I am chockfull of crotchets, and brimfull of brag. Now, it is easy, we all know, to prophesy a thing after it has happened, but if I foretell a thing and it comes out true, if I haven’t a right to brag of my skill, I have a right to boast that I guessed right at all events. Now, when I set on foot a scheme for carrying the Atlantic mail in steamers, and calculated all the distances and chances, and showed them Bristol folks (for I went to that place on purpose) that it was shorter by thirty-six miles to come to Halifax, and then go to New York, than to go to New York direct, they just laughed at me, and so did the English Government. They said it couldn’t be shorter in the nature of things. There was a captain in the navy to London too, who said, ‘Mr Slick, you are wrong, and I think I ought to know something about it,’ giving a toss of his head. ‘Well,’ sais I, with another toss of mine, ‘I think you ought too, and I am sorry you don’t, that’s all.’
“Then the Squire said:—‘Why, how you talk, Mr Slick! Recollect, if you please, that Doctor Lardner says that steam won’t do to cross the Atlantic, and he is a great gun.”
“‘Well,’ sais I, ‘I don’t care a fig for what Lardner says, or any other locomotive lecturer under the light of the living sun. If a steamer can go agin a stream, and a plaguy strong one too, two thousand five hundred miles up the Mississippi, why in natur can’t it be fixed so as to go across the Atlantic?’
“Well, some time after that, my second Clockmaker came out in London, and, sais I, I’ll stand or fall by my opinion, right or wrong, and I just put it body and breeches all down in figures in that book. Well, that set inquiries on foot, folks began to calculate—a tender was made and accepted, and now steam across the Atlantic is a fixed fact, and an old story. Our folks warn’t over pleased about it, they consaited I should have told them first, so they might have taken the lead in it, as they like to go ahead of the British in all things, and I wish to goodness I had, for thanks are better nor jeers at any time.
“Well, I was right there, you see. So on this subject I have told Squire, and them who ought to know something of the colonies they rule, over and over again, and warned government that something was wanting to place these provinces on a proper permanent footing; that I knew the temper of colony folks better than they did, and you will find in my Journals the subject often mentioned. But no, a debate on a beer bill, or a metropolitan bridge, or a constabulary act, is so pressing, there is no time. Well, sure enough that’s all come true. First, the Canadian league started up, it was a feverish symptom, and it subsided by good treatment, without letting blood. Last winter it was debated in the Legislature here, and the best and ablest speeches made on it ever heard in British America, and infinitely superior to the great majority of those uttered in the House of Commons.1 Do you suppose for a moment that proud-spirited, independent, able men like those members, will long endure the control of a Colonial minister, who, they feel, is as much below them in talent, as by accident he may be above them in rank? No, Sir, the day is past. The form of provincial government is changed, and with it provincial dependence also. When we become men, we must put away childish thing’s.
1 All these speeches are well worth reading, especially those of Mr Howe, Mr Johnston, and Mr M. Wilkins. That of the former gentleman is incomparably superior to any one delivered during the last session of the Imperial Parliament.
“There is a sense of soreness that is uncomfortably felt by a colonist now when he surveys our condition, and that of Englishmen, and compares his own with it. He can hardly tell you what he wants, he has yet no definite plan: but he desires something that will place him on a perfect equality with either. When I was in Europe lately, I spent a day at Richmond, with one of them I had known out in America. He was a Tory, too, and a pretty staunch one, I tell you.
“Thinks I to myself, ‘I’ll put you through your paces a little, my young sucking Washington, for fear you will get out of practice when you get back.’